
Bitcoin $500 - imd23
https://cloudup.com/c8CN2Jj3GHk
======
kmfrk
I remember trying to buy some BTC on MtGox for fun, the last time the price
crashed.

What an unspeakably horrible service. I thought I was in for hundreds of
dollars over budget, but it turns out that not a single BTC was purchased at
all.

I only intended to buy ~$50 worth, so I would only have earnt something like
$200, but for the love of everything, stay the hell away from MtGox. It's
insane how unprofessional they are.

healthcare.gov may be bad, but this is five circles of hell down from that.

~~~
oleganza
MtGox was handling 90% of exchange last year, but now - only 25-30%. Bitstamp
is huge now, and Bitcoin-Central.net is easy to use (although it hasn't
regained it's past volume yet).

~~~
Nilzor
Just signed up with Bitstamp to try it out, but why don't they accept VISA
deposits?

~~~
oleganza
Bitcoin is not reversible after 10 minutes, credit card transaction is not
reversible after 90 days in some cases. Guess how much fraud will happen to
anyone selling Bitcoin with PayPal, Visa or similarly reversible payment
mechanism.

The pain in the ass with buying Bitcoins is due to a simple thing: you never
own government currency, you always ask someone else for permission to use it
and it's always based on human decision. Gold and Bitcoin you can own. Paper
bills you can own to some degree (they print more of them every minute, thus
taxing your savings all the time). Digital virtual currency USD or EUR in your
virtual bank account - you don't own. Banks can even reverse SWIFT/SEPA
transfers if they want.

~~~
wr1472
I'm intrigued - how is BTC reversible within 10 mins?

~~~
oleganza
Not much. Zero-confirmation transactions are quite hard to revert, so they are
widely accepted for small instant purchases.

Here's how you normally do it: send a transaction with fairly recent inputs
with a zero mining fee. If you are lucky, it will propagate slowly and will
reach the merchant sooner than 50% of the network nodes see it. When the
merchant sees your transaction, he ships you the product, then you immediately
send out double-spending transaction with standard mining fees (sent to your
own address). It will propagate much faster and probably will end up mined
before the first one.

Fraud with zero-confirmed transactions is most likely in some fully-automated
schemes like lotteries, where repeated attempts to reverse the payment pay off
immediately.

------
pseudonym
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox at
this point? How can this be a viable source of BTC->USD comparison when the
only thing you can do with a USD balance on MtG is buy?

~~~
seanalltogether
I cashed out all my coins at $144 over a month ago now and I've still been
waiting for money to show up. One the one hand I feel annoyed at losing out on
the huge rise in value, on the other hand this huge delay makes me feel
justified in escaping this terrible system.

~~~
dwaltrip
Mtgox != bitcoin. For everyone who is wondering, Coinbase actually has pretty
good service.

------
snitko
Well now it must definitely be too late to invest. Don't even think about it
guys. It's a ponzi scheme slash not real money slash libertarian wet dream.
I'd rather trust helicopter Ben with my savings than some obscure open source
software that eats 10Gb of my disk space.

~~~
Aqueous
The market capitalization of US dollars is (correct if I'm wrong) $3 trillion.

The current market capitalization of BitCoin is above $5 billion.

There will only be around 21 million BitCoins.

If the market capitlization of BitCoin even gets close to a national currency
like the US dollar, each BitCoin will be worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars.

We are about to be at $500. Unless governments crack down on BitCoin(possible)
I don't foresee this stopping anytime soon.

To me government intervention to the point of banning BitCoin seems like it
would be, at this point, somewhat pointless. The Federal Government has known
about BitCoin for some time and has yet to take any major regulatory action
against it. I think if they wanted to shut it down they would have long before
millions of people started using it, and long before major backers like Peter
Thiel and the Winklevi had time to establish BitCoin-based companies and
lobbying groups. You want to nip something like this in the bud before it
becomes an entrenched interest - and they haven't done that yet.

I'd say it's not too late to invest.

~~~
Element_
The US gov waited until eGold was doing ~2 billion in transactions annually
before it moved to shut it down. Given the growth rate of btc it just recently
became big enough to get the attention of the federal gov. I think it is
certain the US government will attempt to shut it down more a question of when
and how elaborate their attempt is (e.g. Will they try to: arrest a few btc
users, dump large sums of money into the btc markets to destabilize it, or
build a cluster larger than the entire btc network).

~~~
BrokenPipe
And if they had already built the largest cluster of asics in the btc network
we wouldn't even know as long as they distribute it enough and even join most
pools for good measure.

------
ck2
What happens to the price when only people with 500Ghash/sec+ can make coins
next month?

Early adopters are rightfully getting a nice reward now, but how do you get
"fresh blood" when the difficulty is off the chart unless you have several
thousand dollars in hardware?

~~~
Jach
wat. The important figures for miners are the btc/usd conversion rate, the
network difficulty, your hash rate itself, how much you initially paid for
your rig ($/Gh) and how much power you're drawing ($/watt). All of these
factors are important, but what will dominate over the coming months is power
cost. Someone mining a 100 GH/s rig will make 5 times less BTC per day as
someone mining a 500 GH/s rig, it's true, but if the 500 GH/s is sucking up
proportionally more than 5 times the electricity then it can be better to mine
with the lower hash rate. If the conversion rate improves that delays the
period where electricity costs outweighs the income. For the difficulty to
rise another order of magnitude (which would make BFL 60 GH/s Singles
worthless), there needs to be about another 30 PH added to the network --
where's that coming from in only a month? In any case, people dropping their
rigs because they're too power hungry may cause the difficulty to go down and
make it worthwhile again for some who live in low-electricity-cost areas...
There are variables you're not taking into account, hence the wat.

~~~
ck2
That's the thing, the new 500Ghash machines can smoke your 500Mhash machines
and they use only a little more power. They are using 28nm ASIC.

A farm from a year ago can be completely outpowered by a couple of these
machines.

And they are coming online in force over the next 30 to 60 days.

~~~
Jach
Anyone with MH/s-level farms from GPUs have turned them off months ago (or
moved to Litecoin). There's some new 28nm ASICs that use less power per hash
than the larger nm ASICs, so eventually those will face the same fate as GPUs
from power costs (not so much from hash rate -- there are only a few TH
machines on the near horizon), but the next 30-60 days isn't enough time to
make that happen.

~~~
ValentineC
Isn't Litecoin's value more or less pegged to BTC? I did a quick calculation
with one of the online calculators [1] and it seems that it's a challenge to
turn a profit from Litecoin GPU mining too.

[1] [http://ltc.kattare.com/calc.php](http://ltc.kattare.com/calc.php)

~~~
Jach
It used to be more or less pegged, but at least over the past several months
it's not quite that simple: [http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-
charts.php?period=al...](http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-
charts.php?period=alltime&resolution=day&pair=ltc-btc&market=btc-e)

It's hard to make a profit with litecoin, but a single 7950 can still make you
around USD $1/day right now after electricity costs. I have a friend who
started mining with 4 of them when summer began, they (and the motherboard,
power supply, etc. he used for his setup) ROI'd a while ago. I don't know if
it makes sense to buy new GPUs anymore... But at least if it does become
unprofitable for all but those who have the best GPUs on the market in the
cheapest electricity areas (or even for everyone in the event that litecoin
dies completely), you still have very excellent gaming GPUs you can resell at
a good price to people on Craigslist/ebay. With the "next gen" of consoles
that have just come out being so under-powered, a gamer can expect a 7950 or
better to handle any PC ports that come out of this gen...

------
singular
For those who are interested, pleasingly it's considerably easier to buy/sell
btc in the UK these days, [32] and [33] are very functional - I used [32] to
buy coins and then [33] to sell some just today. [33] looks much better value
both ways but [32] is about as easy as it gets.

* Using comedy numbering scheme in reference to [1337].

[32]:[https://bittylicious.com/](https://bittylicious.com/)
[33]:[https://localbitcoins.com/](https://localbitcoins.com/)
[1337]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373)

------
dugmartin
I went to this talk in 2011 where Gavin Andresen tried giving bitcoin away to
anyone that emailed him: [http://blip.tv/amherstmedia/making-money-gavin-
andresen-igni...](http://blip.tv/amherstmedia/making-money-gavin-andresen-
ignite-amherst-4789326)

~~~
haakon
So – did you email him?

~~~
dugmartin
No, and I have a feeling in a few more years they will be worth as much as
they were then.

------
rdl
I'm really glad I wasn't able to figure out how to short bitcoin right after
the Silk Road takedown; I would have gone broke.

~~~
Tycho
I wouldn't want to short the one asset that's been on an exponential growth
curve. It can only go down 100% but who knows how high it could climb. At
least put a ceiling on it.

~~~
iamjustin
>It can only go down 100%

Isn't this true of all stocks/commodities? You can only lose 100% of your
money.

~~~
idProQuo
Short selling is a different game. In essence you're betting that the price
will go down. Right now the price could go down $500, and you'd make $500.
However if the price rose $10,000 you'd lose $10,000.

------
dcc1
Its 470$ on bitstamp, please ignore mtgox rate, that site is unusable

~~~
joosters
So who's using it then?

~~~
shocks
It's very easy to withdraw from MtGox with Japanese and Chinese currencies.
BTCChina is very close to GoxUSD in terms of price. The MtGox price is
actually pretty accurate, bitstamp is the one that is lagging behind.

~~~
etherael
So can you swift/iban jpy to your bank from gox and expect a good turnaround
time?

~~~
shocks
Well you can withdraw to a Chinese/Japanese bank account in one working day.

------
wslh
"Bitcoin will have to change the mining hashing function (SHA-256) in 7 years"
[https://twitter.com/SDLerner/status/401467511784235008](https://twitter.com/SDLerner/status/401467511784235008)

~~~
oleganza
For the purposes of hashing, double SHA256 is very far from being "broken" or
drastically accelerated. If there's some ultra-fast chip that increases
hashing by a factor of million, there are still enough of non-zero bits to
have unique block hashes. And if, by chance, two blocks have the same hash, it
does not break anything at all: each block has a unique serial number
("height") anyway. Hash is only used as a proof of work for a given height.

------
dwaltrip
One of the most interesting things about discussions regarding bitcoin is you
can always count on a few people getting quite angry and spiteful, as if they
are personally offended by its existence.

Remember friends, keep your identity small ;) --
[http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html)

------
tux
Now is the time to convert your bitcoins to cash, because this wont last for
much longer :-)

~~~
SG-
that doesn't make any sense. it will be $1000/btc in less than a year.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
And it draws into question whether bitcoins can be a useful currency. Can you
trade fractional bitcoins? I'm ignorant on the subject, but if not, well
carrying around $500 bills is pretty limiting.

~~~
SG-
yes, you can trade or buy the tiniest amount (fraction) of bitcoin.

-0.01 BTC = 1 cBTC = 1 centibitcoin (also referred to as bitcent)

-0.001 BTC = 1 mBTC = 1 millibitcoin (also referred to as mbit (pronounced em-bit) or millibit or even bit mill)

-0.000 001 BTC = 1 μBTC = 1 microbitcoin (also referred to as ubit (pronounced yu-bit) or microbit)

-0.000 000 01 BTC = 1 satoshi (pronounced sa-toh-shee)

------
Mad_Dud
Could the recent peak be related with the Cryptolocker campaign?

~~~
mwilcox
It's more likely driven by recent interest of Bitcoin from China:
[http://index.baidu.com/main/word.php?word=%B1%C8%CC%D8%B1%D2](http://index.baidu.com/main/word.php?word=%B1%C8%CC%D8%B1%D2)

~~~
Egregore
Can't great firewall of china be configured to block port 8333?

------
knodi
I hope there is a crash coming.

~~~
dwaltrip
That is a curious thing to say. Why is that?

~~~
knodi
so I can buy them as a cheaper price point and the current market gain is just
people buying to making 10% gains daily and not really to use the coins as
currency.

------
prawn
Options for purchasing for someone in Australia? Coinbase appears to be US
only. Their support docs suggest international support in early 2013, but no
sign of that being realised.

------
Egregore
What will happen with the price of bitcoin if quantum computer with enough
q-bits will be invented?

~~~
oleganza
Most probably, quantum computer will not be invented overnight. Hash functions
are not seriously vulnerable, but ECDSA signatures are. Fortunately, most
funds are sitting on never-used addresses which are basically the hashes of
the public keys, which are not instantly crackable by a quantum computer.
People will probably have time to switch to a new signature method which is
resistant to QC. Like Lamport Signatures, for instance.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signature)

The price will dip, but may recover pretty quickly, like when the famous
v0.7/v0.8 fork that happened this March.

If the Bitcoin can't be fixed and becomes unusable, its value will instantly
become zero and everyone's savings in it will become permanently lost.

------
notdrunkatall
No matter your take on bitcoin's long-term viability (or lack thereof), it can
hardly be argued that this isn't damn interesting to watch unfold.

A cryptocurrency with zero backing that exists only in digital form is now
worth many billions of dollars. Is it a bubble? Will this foment a currency
revolution of sorts? If it doesn't crash, how will governments react? If it
does crash, what will replace it? Obviously there is a demand for a
decentralized currency, and as more people realize that something like this is
possible, I can only see demand for it going one way: up. Most people have
never even heard of bitcoin; I've only talked to a few people in my own life
who are even familiar with the word, and fewer still who know what it actually
is. Yet with even such a small awareness, bitcoin's value has grown from zero
to billions in a few years. Unless governments step in and find some way to
put the kibosh on decentralized currencies in general, it seems unlikely that
demand is going to shrink as awareness continues to increase. We're so used to
governments essentially owning currencies that it is very difficult to imagine
a world where they don't, but obviously, if cryptocurrencies take off in a big
way, the implications for the future are profound.

~~~
oleganza
1\. Any money is a bubble in a sense. It's a feedback loop of speculation that
the commodity at hand will be widely accepted by other speculators in the
future. The only basis for this speculation is that people need some money to
trade. The money bubble pops only if there's some other, better commodity on
the horizon that speculators may bet on. [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.fr/2013/04/bitcoin-...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.fr/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html)

2\. Some governments are very supportive (at least, not intrusive): Germany,
China, Hong Kong, Canada. In United States Bitcoin is effectively 90%
forbidden already. Banks close accounts for Bitcoin businesses with no reason,
regulatory approval is very slow and very-very expensive (need to get it from
all states), past history of very aggressive raids on financial experiments.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>1\. Any money is a bubble in a sense.

Not really, no. Peter Thiel's explanation of bubbles is great. He says that
bubbles arise when there is (1) widespread, intense belief that’s (2) not
true. During the dotcom bubble, people were pouring money into companies
simply for having a domain name; the intense belief was that the companies
were worth a ton of money, and that simply was not true. A similar reasoning
led to the housing bubble: the intense belief in that case was that houses are
great investment vehicles and they always appreciate in value. Turns out that
also was not true.

Currently, the main thing that is driving Bitcoin's price is speculation.
There is widespread, intense belief that it will become a major currency. Is
that belief true? The simple answer is we don't know.

But that's not true with just any money. The dollar for example is not a
bubble: people believe it to be a reliable medium of exchange, and the fact
that it is backed by the US government makes that belief true. Therefore it is
not a bubble.

~~~
waps
And the same isn't true for the USD ? It's only true to the extent you believe
the US government can't fail to increase economic activity YoY _. Or, say, for
a small currency like the famous Swiss franc ? There are plenty of currencies
where the stability of the state behind it is in doubt. I would say
dictatorships like Dubai or Kuwait or ..., who have very badly paid "slaves"
who far outnumber their own population are at a very significant risk of
revolt. Or rather, they would never be able to prevent an even mildly popular
revolt from taking over the state. They're not worthless, in fact they can be
quite valuable.

And then of course, there's currencies of states that have little qualms of
open currency manipulation like the Renminbi.

But even the USD, or at the very least it's value, but I'd argue the US state
itself as well, has several critical dependencies. Oil would be the most
obvious one, but easy and safe access to the seas, not just around the US, but
all over the planet. And I'm sure there's dozens of other things.

In short : The US is not invincible, and I'm pretty sure the status of the USD
currently does reflect that belief.

_ Note that this is a falsehood. Speaking on an indefinite timescale, it's an
absolute certainty the US will fail. And economic output will falter with a
much greater certainty. So it's a matter of when, not if. And the USD may have
lasted longer than average for a currency, but it's nowhere near the top (that
would be the Holy Roman Empire and it's Guilder (later replaced, and it's
complex, depending on regions, ... I guess when a state celebrates a
millenium's existence some issues crop up with the currency and they have to
play around with it. Some day the US may be lucky enough to have to do the
same. The "real" currency can be said to be silver).

It's also humbling to think that this very, very, very long running state did
fail eventually (yes, you can make an argument that it didn't really fail,
only parts did, most made smooth transitions to their currently existing forms
... I wouldn't agree with that argument but it's not indefensible).

------
pearjuice
Here we go again. A thread full of financial experts, conspiracists and
excessive naysayers. Let's keep Bitcoin off the frontpage until it crashes,
okay? With this trend it will reach an all-time-high every week or so which
every tech blog will wrap in a bag-full-of-fluff-blogpost, there will be new
analysis et cetera.

 _Let it go_. Just enjoy the ride.

~~~
drewblaisdell
> Let's keep Bitcoin off the frontpage until it crashes, okay?

Because you say so, right?

~~~
pearjuice
It was a proposal and my current opinion on the Bitcoin spam every few days on
Hacker News. I wasn't expecting anyone to agree with me, but for one am free
to state my opinion.

------
fabiofederici
Is it possible to predict Bitcoin?
[https://www.facebook.com/coinalytics](https://www.facebook.com/coinalytics)

~~~
Mahn
No.

