
Bitcoin goes up $10 in just one hour - Amarandei
http://bitcoinity.org/markets?exchange=mtgox&sarcasm=yes
======
nsrivast
Uses of money:

1) medium of exchange

2) store of value

3) unit of account

4) common ground for rumor and speculation!

~~~
jacques_chester
On HN we try to upset the established order, so if you could just go ahead and
rearrange your list, that would be greeaaaat

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aarondf
And it just went down $10 in a few minutes

<http://aarondfrancis.clarify-it.com/d/mqvp3z>

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olh
Mtgox is having a trade lag above 15 minutes. This is making the
market/traders crazy.

~~~
jacques_chester
Lag in dynamic systems often causes humans to reach for dramatic adjustments.

cf. The Beer Game or Dietrich Dörner's thermometer experiments.

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aneth4
For a bitcoin newbie, what are the credible platforms to buy and trade
bitcoins?

For those that follow bitcoin news, I'm sure there is a plethora of "don't do
this," "those guys did this," etc., but what do I do as someone who knows
nothing about bitcoins and how to keep them safe?

~~~
ok_craig
I have found Coinbase to be pretty convenient for buying and selling bitcoins.

For how to keep them secure once you have them, I recommend simply doing some
research. Coinbase provides a basic wallet and if I remember correctly, they
cold store most of their coins offline.

Blockchain.info is another good option for a basic wallet. It's simple with a
good amount of features. Your wallet is also decrypted in-browser and not on
their server so they don't store compromising information.

There are also concepts such as a paper wallet [1] and a brainwallet [2] for
extreme security. A brainwallet is basically what it sounds like - a way of
storing your wallet in your head.

[1] <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Paper_wallet> [2]
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet>

~~~
aneth4
Tried them. It says:

"Sorry, the maximum number of purchases on Coinbase has been reached for
today. Please try again in 24 hours. We'll continue raising this limit over
time."

These sort of security and reliability concerns are certain to hold bitcoin
back. Granted they also represent the opportunity, as surely they will be
resolved.

~~~
ok_craig
Well there's always MtGox, which I don't think has any limits, but you have to
give them an absurd amount of identity verification to be able to place
orders, which scared me away.

There are multiple services, Coinbase is just one of them. This particular
instance of you not being able to place an order through them is not
indicative of a wider tendency to not be able to place orders.

Coinbase has a 24-hour rolling limit for how many coins can be sold through
them. This is reliably the case every day.

Also, not being able to buy coins doesn't seem to be a "security" issue.

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retrogradeorbit
This is a hugely misleading statement. Zoom out. Regarding the previous 2
hours one could say "Bitcoin collapses by $10 in just two hours". Zoom further
out... Look at the last year... Looks like it might recently be a bit of a
bubble.

~~~
aarongolliver
People on IRC keep trying to tell me bitcoin is stable. I'll never understand
what their reasoning is.

~~~
TrevorJ
It's a half statement without a time scale attached to it. Stable over what
period? A day? A month? 5 years?

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EduardoBautista
Isn't anyone worried about the Bitcoin bubble bursting? The price is going to
get really high because of all the exposure it is receiving right now and
people buying a bunch of it hoping that it will just keep going up and up and
up.

~~~
ricardobeat
More adoption means it can only go up.

Maybe too optimistic, but read [http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-
value-for-bitcoin...](http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-
bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/)

edit: yeah, brainfart. I meant to say that "people buying a bunch of it" can
only make it go up, not that it can't (or won't) go down again.

~~~
bluedanieru
More adoption doesn't necessarily mean that. Of players who hold on to Bitcoin
for longer than a few minutes, virtually all of them are speculators. If you
accept Bitcoin as payment for services, your biggest technical challenge is
converting them back into dollars/euros/whatever as quickly as possible. No
one is accepting Bitcoin as payment and then holding on to them in order to
buy something else or pay their workers.

As a long term (or medium-term anyway) store of value, Bitcoin is really quite
useless for the time being.

~~~
rishimoko
> No one is accepting Bitcoin as payment and then holding on to them in order
> to buy something else or pay their workers.

Brewster Kahle at archive.org gives his employees the option to be paid in
bitcoin received by the site.

> As a long term (or medium-term anyway) store of value, Bitcoin is really
> quite useless for the time being.

That's quite incorrect. Bitcoin has proven to be an excellent tool for buying
low, waiting for a price rise, trading some of the bitcoin for gold, selling
some of the gold and buying more bitcoin with the proceeds.

It's a great tool if you're willing to learn how to use it.

~~~
bluedanieru
>Brewster Kahle at archive.org gives his employees the option to be paid in
bitcoin received by the site.

That's pretty cool actually, although personally I wouldn't do it. Hope to see
more of that.

>Bitcoin has proven to be an excellent tool for buying low, waiting for a
price rise, trading some of the bitcoin for gold, selling some of the gold and
buying more bitcoin with the proceeds.

This speaks to Bitcoin's utility as an instrument for speculation, not for
storing value. If it was a good store of value you would print out your
private key and put it in a safety deposit box, confident that whenever you
returned to retrieve it, it would represent approximately the same amount of
wealth that it did when you left it.

This is most definitely not the case with Bitcoin at all.

~~~
rishimoko
> If it was a good store of value you would print out your private key and put
> it in a safety deposit box

I have quite a number of btc stored in cold wallets.

My point is that because of Bitcoin, I actually have fluid wealth to move
around and store, be it with metals or cryptocurrency. I didn't have that
freedom with US cash, an instrument whose value is rapidly decreasing and has
been for a long time.

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nevster
And there it goes - crashing down $10 in the last minute or so...

~~~
navpatel
I happened to click the link exactly when it started falling. I wasn't sure if
this was some kind of a joke. And the "&sarcasm=yes" doesn't help either

~~~
nevster
Volatility much! Watching it swing up and down between 36 and 41 is just
crazy.

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hkmurakami
This reminds me of a volatile tech stock falling 15+% afterhours after a bad
earnings report, only to bounce back 10+% or more the following morning.

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Amarandei
No one mentioned about the URL. Ok, I'll mention it :)

~~~
wulfen
Thanks, thought I was the only one :)

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Amarandei
I posted this just because I found it very funny that the price went down and
then up and people started already writing about it. Maybe I'm the only one
seeing the humor in it.

~~~
bluedanieru
It shed 25% of its worth just as quickly.

"This time it's different."

~~~
wulfen
I'm pretty sure that's the point ...

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aklemm
What are the odds that the latest exposure will be followed by sabre rattling
from politicians against bitcoin? And would that scare off enough people to
drop the price?

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teilo
Want to know what the price of Bitcoin is _really_ about? Look at the 30-day
chart.

Classic hype-curve hockeystick. Everyone should by now know what comes next.

~~~
bornonmars
Did you look at what's really driving the value of Bitcoin? Fine, the price
will readjust, but you should forget most classic financial analysis tools
atm. That said, I'm building a new little model _justforfun_ to predict the
price through some unusual growth drivers.

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scoot
Where do I short?!

~~~
tantalor
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MPEx#Options>

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redegg
Lol @ $10 spread.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
Sorry? The spread looks to me about 30 cents. Am I missing something?

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aet
Time to sell...

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OGinparadise
Pardon my Bitcoin ignorance, but you can sell, say $1 million worth of coins
and not crash the price?

How thinly is this traded? 20%+ or - in hours can't be good

~~~
redegg
No, you would bring it down maybe $10-20.

~~~
jackmoore
And what would it bring it down to if it that drop caused a mild panic in the
market?

