
Bitcoin's First $1k Weekend Since 2017 Marks Nine-Month High - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-11/bitcoin-extends-surge-past-7-300-to-highest-since-september
======
bithavoc
“If you're partying about Bitcoin's price, here's a timely reminder that
everything you think you know is a lie”

[https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1127364374451163136...](https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1127364374451163136?s=21)

~~~
empath75
Yeah this is all being driven by tether collapsing which is driving up prices
on bitfinex and people trying to arbitrage the price difference before
bitfinex goes bankrupt. They’re also printing tether like crazy again.

~~~
sixQuarks
Not saying you’re wrong, but HN comments were the thing that convinced me not
to buy bitcoin at $1

~~~
loceng
Perhaps since you didn't buy you could have a unique perspective. Imagine you
bought at $1 and made $10s of millions of dollars - whether from any value or
work actually being done, or whether it was just the effect of a global,
decentralized Ponzi-Pyramid-like scheme. Imagine you don't sell all of it
because, well, now you're set for life - or in a better position than you were
before - so you're happy to promote whatever cryptocurrency you hold, in hopes
it goes up further in value. Imagine then instead you bought it anywhere from
$5000 to its peak $19,000+ value. Imagine how desperate and how incentivized
you may be wanting or working towards increasing the positive perception and
therefore demand of whatever cryptocurrency. Now imagine this army of
"HODLers" that seems to mostly be tied to ideology and greed over there being
any seemingly useful consumer use case that's better than non-cryptocurrency
alternatives. Then understand that as this army of HODLers grows, they will
influence and lobby or inject themselves further into regulatory bodies
(regulatory capture) in order to try to force (even subtly) the rest of
society to adopt cryptocurrencies, in order to try to legitimize them -
however in reality it's in order to transfer wealth an unnecessary and
unreasonable amount from late adopters weighted towards the earliest adopters,
so they can realize their "gains" \- to exit from the Ponzi-Pyramid scheme.

Edit: The initial downvotes didn't don't convince me that the pro-Bitcoin et
al holders aren't part of a Pyramid-Ponzi scheme, however they were certainly
expected to happen in this thread.

If you're not familiar with indoctrination - which is belief guided by others
with similar bias and blind spots - even Fred Wilson, USV partner - USV who's
early investor in Coinbase (etc) acknowledged the problem of
ideologies/orthodoxy (yet blind to it himself it seems):
[https://avc.com/2019/04/orthodoxy/](https://avc.com/2019/04/orthodoxy/) \--
Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies is religion with members tied together with a
financial incentive.

------
cs702
Perhaps it should be called "cockroach-coin," because it has survived again
and again and again.

Bitcoin's price rose from $1 to $29 in its early years, then dropped to $2 in
2011... and Bitcoin survived. Price then gradually rose from $2 to $269, and
subsequently dropped to $68 in 2013... and Bitcoin survived again. Price then
rose from $68 to $1147, and then dropped to $177 in 2015, and Bitcoin kept on
surviving. Price then rose from $177 to $19891 (wow!) and promptly dropped to
$3625 in 2018, and yes, Bitcoin survived yet again. Price is now at around
$7200.

Tensions escalate between the US and China, Bitcoin survives. North Korea
launches new test missiles, Bitcoin survives. Venezuela's economy implodes,
Bitcoin survives. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq escalate in unpredictable
ways, Bitcoin survives. Geopolitical crises flare up. Entire economies
implode. Nations may cease to exist. Bitcoin somehow keeps on surviving.

I wonder, could Bitcoin have greater staying power than most nations and
currencies in history?

~~~
lucb1e
Bitcoin miners pollute just enough (or take away just enough green energy
capacity) to tip the earth over the edge. Bitcoin dies along with everyone
else.

It's a hyperbole, but seriously, while Bitcoin may survive politics, it must
die. Let a non-POW cryptocurrency please replace it.

~~~
velox_io
You could say this about mining any other commodity. Modern mining is
literally converting fuel into some metal or mineral.

For instance: There's only a finite amount of gold, and until recently
(electronics), it had no real applications aside from looking nice _. Yet gold
has been mined for millennia, historically with slaves (sadly this is still
the case in parts of the world) and now with machines._ The economic use stems
from this, and as gold has always been sort-after, it's desire (value)
probably won't change anytime soon. While you can't wear bitcoin, I don't see
it disappearing either.

~~~
Qworg
If you could summon gold from the ground in a more efficient way, would you?

Bitcoin mining is meant to be inefficient - why not try for a better way with
similar guarantees?

~~~
cdiddy2
wouldnt making gold mining more efficient just mean that you would mine more
of it eventually taking the same amount of overall energy use?

~~~
mikeash
Not really, because most of your costs aren’t energy.

------
MrRadar
Given the recent news about Tether's solvency issues I wonder if this is not
partially due to a "run" on Tether exchanges. Back in the day just before
MtGox collapsed, when its solvency issues were obvious but it was not yet
officially bankrupt, it experienced a run up in the price of BTC (due to BTC
being the only means for people to withdraw value from the exchange) and this
price increase "spilled over" to other (solvent) exchanges even though in a
rational market it should not have.

~~~
chrononaut
> I wonder if this is not partially due to a "run" in Tether exchanges

Could this be something that's easily measured? e.g., I suppose in this case
exchanges using Tether would have a larger than normal price for Bitcoin than
usual, for a slightly longer amount of time, compared to the days preceding?

I would be surprised if this information doesn't exist somewhere, and if many
people weren't already looking at it for arbitrage purposes, but due to my
unfamiliarity in this space I would have no idea where to find it.

~~~
empath75
There was a several hundred dollar difference until like the last day or so.

------
velox_io
I've had my eye on this. It settled around £3000 for some time. Then lately it
became far more active, fluctuating between 3 to £4K and on an upward trend...

I do think media coverage (hype) fueled bitCoin exploding (then imploding).
It's not a good thing when EVERYONE starts raving about investments.

------
sverige
Bitcoin: 1990s Vancouver penny stocks, modified to use a blockchain instead of
mystery mineral deposits.

~~~
SatoshiPacioli
Why don’t Vancouver penny stocks go on bull markets every couple of years,
setting a new all time high with each one?

~~~
tyingq
Inferior marketing.

------
KasianFranks
Cryptos serve primarily as a trading vehicle. This is the most important
point. It enables startups to raise capital from a global capital marketplace
while allowing traders from around the world to participate. This is unlike
any other marketplace. You can't do that with Nasdaq or NYSE as you have to be
accredited investors with US bank accounts unless you're savvy enough to work
through LLCs.

Andreessen and friends see this too [https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/05/10/sec-
approves-new-silicon...](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/05/10/sec-approves-new-
silicon-valley-stock-exchange-backed-by-marc-andreessen-other-tech-
heavyweights.html)

~~~
pavlov
Companies that raised money through ICOs are not so much startups as boiler
room scams.

If you want to raise money by selling stock to non-Americans, there are
European crowdfunding platforms that let you do exactly that. Real companies
with actual products[1] have raised millions on these platforms, whereas every
ICO ever is stuck in "plausible deniability R&D mode" where they pretend to be
implementing their magic-powered whitepaper but nobody actually uses any of
the stuff.

[1] BrewDog, Monzo, Revolut spring to mind as UK examples.

~~~
seibelj
Ethereum and Cosmos did ICOs and they have been quite successful, delivering
on their promises. Maybe 99/100 ICOs fail but the same can be said about VC-
backed startups.

~~~
pavlov
Ethereum is basically an ICO pyramid scam, since the only use case for it has
been to enable more ICOs.

Anything else has failed miserably because the network can't handle the
traffic. Of course they're promising a scaling fix Real Soon Now (see above
for "plausible deniability R&D mode").

~~~
seibelj
USDC is a stablecoin backed one-for-one with US dollars, audited by Grant
Thornton and operated by Circle and Coinbase, which are regulated and above-
board legal cryptocurrency exchanges. As of this writing, $327 million has
been converted into it, and any amount of money can be transferred globally
within seconds. Over 250,000 transactions have occurred since September 2018
when it launched. This is a legitimate use-case that has been enabled by
Ethereum. Wiring money or using ACH is more expensive, slower, and more
cumbersome than USDC.

[https://www.circle.com/en/usdc](https://www.circle.com/en/usdc)

[https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0c...](https://etherscan.io/token/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb0ce3606eb48)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Wiring money or using ACH is more expensive, slower, and more cumbersome
> that USDC_

Wiring is free and instantaneous for anyone sending moderate sums. Fidelity,
for example, does this.

~~~
seibelj
How long and how expensive is it to wire $10,000,000 from Nigeria to South
Korea? With USDC, it takes seconds and costs about 2 cents.

~~~
pavlov
How does one convert $10M dollars in a Nigerian bank account into USDC? That
seems like a necessary first step.

~~~
seibelj
I show a legitimate use case other than “ICO pyramid scams” and you move the
goal posts. It shows that you have an opinion about cryptocurrency that cannot
be changed by logic, and are essentially a troll.

~~~
pavlov
You claim that one can wire 10 million dollars from Nigeria in two seconds. If
you’re not even going to answer the most obvious question about how someone
could do this, it’s hardly a real world use case.

I’m not sure if you understand how the boring old SWIFT-addressed wire
competes here. I haven’t sent 10 million, but hundreds of thousands anyway. It
costs no more than $25, is settled within hours, and has all sorts of
safeguards that don’t exist in crypto. The funds are immediately available for
use rather than USDC which AFAIK isn’t accepted for payment on anything,
anywhere.

------
robertAngst
I imagine its easy to see Bitcoin as useless if you live in the United States.

However, given the inflation South Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and numerous
countries in Africa, I find Bitcoin has a real use.

I'm sure many of those citizens do not want to be dependent on a foreign
countries central bank for a steady currency.

~~~
arbuge
> However, given the inflation South Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and numerous
> countries in Africa, I find Bitcoin has a real use.

South Korea doesn't belong in this list at all.

> I'm sure many of those citizens do not want to be dependent on a foreign
> countries central bank for a steady currency.

What makes you so sure about this? Have you surveyed any of them? Given the
amount of US dollars in circulation overseas, the evidence would seem to
indicate that US currency is actually viewed as a highly desirable alternative
to many domestic ones.

~~~
Lucadg
It is but access to hard currency is generally restricted in those countries
as their overinflated currencies work only in an artificial vacuum.

~~~
numbsafari
Is there evidence of widespread use of crypto amongst non-elites?

I see crypto as more of a competitor for jewelry and other fine assets
traditionally used to expatriate familial and illicit wealth from collapsing
regimes, than as a mechanism adopted by every day citizens.

For example, how exactly are Venezuelans supposed to participate in crypto
when their internet and electrical grids are so unstable?

~~~
stevenwoo
There were several articles over the past years citing individuals in South
Korea seeing bitcoin as an opportunity for a middle class life and in Eastern
Europe with the same end goals. some recent updates:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/business/south-korea-
bitc...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/business/south-korea-bitcoin-
cryptocurrencies.html) [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/georgia-
bitcoin-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/georgia-bitcoin-
blockchain-bitfury.html)

------
naveen99
Almost $30 billion in 24hr trading volume with $10 billion on bitmex. Higher
then when price was $20k.

~~~
conanbatt
Wash trading at its finest.

~~~
tim333
I think bitmex's numbers are fairly kosher though it's leveraged futures
trading rather than direct buying/selling of bitcoin.

------
seibelj
HN is full of blockchain haters, but the only thing you need to know as a
technologist is this:

Cryptocurrency is programmable money.

Is it that hard to understand why this is special? Of course there are all the
other unique features like independence from the state / banks and smart
contracts, and whether you think those are good or bad those are certainly
unique features.

But the number one thing is that Bitcoin is a native internet currency, and
that’s an incredible innovation.

~~~
skrebbel
> Cryptocurrency is programmable money.

That's such a vague expression that it's almost meaningless. I could imagine
"programmable money" to mean all kinds of stuff, much of which Bitcoin isn't.

~~~
seibelj
The asset itself is represented purely in code. Fintech companies like Stripe
are building value-added features on top of the same banking system that
everyone uses, essentially integrations on top of integrations.

A digital asset like Bitcoin is a completely different thing and requires no
licenses, permissions, or anything whatsoever to write software that
manipulates it.

~~~
harryh
> The asset itself is represented purely in code.

You have a checking account at a bank right? What do you think is representing
your bank balance?

I'll give you a hint: there's no drawer anywhere with your name on it and
$X,XXX.XX inside it.

~~~
rpz
And banks, payment processors and other fintech companies hire tens of
thousands of employees each to maintain business as usual. Considering that
bitcoin itself is a ledger and payment processor it makes me wonder if it
could be an Avenue to free up human capital in the future for bigger and
better things.

~~~
notahacker
Except of course, that the Bitcoin ecosystem also uses human capital to write
payment processing infrastructure and attracts people that like to make money
by writing trading algorithms, and the "actually we don't need to pay people
to secure our storage or monitor our transactions" approach is a bug rather
than a feature of crypto exchanges, which is why they lose people's money so
often. The unique thing about proof of work isn't the lack of human capital,
but the enormous energy requirements

------
wyldfire
This price rise is likely in anticipation of access to exchanges from popular
brokers like E-Trade.

------
tim333
Bit annoyed I missed this run up. I think it's been driven by institutional
investors like Harvard's endowment fund buying into crypto.
[https://www.ccn.com/harvard-bought-cryptocurrency-thats-a-
ri...](https://www.ccn.com/harvard-bought-cryptocurrency-thats-a-ridiculously-
big-deal)

As soon as one or two go many others are likely to copy.

------
bdcravens
Meanwhile Tether traded 10x its total market cap.

[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/)

~~~
wc-
Just a heads up, CoinMarketCap has been deliberately dragging its feet on
addressing the issue of blatant wash trading to increase volume reported on
some unregulated exchanges (especially some coming out of/focused on asian
markets).

There are a number of sites working on more reliable volume metrics, one is
here: [https://messari.io/onchainfx](https://messari.io/onchainfx) . (edit: it
is the "Real 10" 24 Hour Vol column)

What CMC is doing is disingenuous at best, they have a clear conflict of
interest, and they are holding back the industry. We should push for
alternative sources of information.

~~~
bdcravens
Yes, but why isn't every coin trading at 10x its market cap? Many of the same
markets that report Tether volume also trade Bitcoin. If you look at relative
differences between coins, even if volume isn't accurate, it indicates a very
concerted effort to keep Tether propped up.

~~~
wc-
The wash trading volume has nothing to do with tether (the trades are not even
executing against the book in many cases, just reported as trades on the data
feeds CMC consumes). Exchanges are using bots to wash trade back and forth on
every trading pair to give the appearance of massive volume in an attempt to
gain customers. It is very easy to see on charts and has nothing to do with
propping tether up, whatever that means.

CoinMarketCap has been asked to exclude these exchanges from their volume
reports for a long time and ignores them, most likely due to a conflict of
interest (exchanges pay to advertise on CMC for example). Just like someone
can create a new token and artificially inflate its market cap, exchanges can
be created and artificially report their volume. CMC does nothing to filter
this out and it results in a totally misleading view of the crypto markets.

OnChainFX is one example of an attempt to remove those wash-trading exchanges
from the total volume reports.

My only reason for the inital reply was to urge people to not use CMC volume
reports, there are better options out there that reflect real trading
activity.

------
karpodiem
It seems that median confirmation time is holding up rather well, around
~10min - [https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/median-confirmation-
tim...](https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/median-confirmation-
time?timespan=60days)

~~~
lordnacho
There's no reason why this would change, as its dependent on the hash rate
rather than the transaction rate.

And even if the transaction rate mattered exchange transactions are not the
same as chain transactions.

~~~
gruez
>as its dependent on the hash rate rather than the transaction rate.

Even hash rate doesn't affect it unless there was a recent spike/dip, because
the network retargets difficulty (controlling for hash rate) every 2 weeks.

------
trollied
Quite interesting seeing just how much the transaction volume massively
dropped off when Dream Market closed down...
[https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions](https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions)

~~~
chrononaut
Why is there such a strong difference between weekday and weekend trading
volume in Bitcoin? Interestingly this distinction was present in the past, but
no longer seems to exist with the latest jump on ~March 24th.

~~~
logicchains
Maybe professional trading firms can't convince their highly-paid trading,
development and support staff to work weekends? Nobody wants to be the guy
that lost $AWESOME_EMPLOYEE_X to $BIG_COMPETITOR because they forced him/her
to work weekends. This would change if more retail investors joined the
market, because they're at least as likely to trade during weekends, and if
there were enough of them then professional firms would be a relatively small
proportion and the effect of their trading hours less noticable.

------
faissaloo
Look I just want it to stablise already.

------
superplussed
Prepare for the new hype cycle.

