
Bitcoin hits $15,000 - karimf
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/7/16745178/bitcoin-value-15000-milestone
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bhouston
Hmm... if I owned any bitcoin I guess i would sell at this point. I can not
imagine it just rising like this for much longer, but honestly I do not
understand the dynamics of why this is happening so I am just defaulting to
"what goes up must come down" type reasoning.

Random non-technical people I know are just getting into the cryptomarket this
week and last as they have heard it is a good must win investment. But is that
really driving up the prices?

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jenkstom
I think we're beginning to see the end of bitcoin, as much as I love the
technology. It'll be a few years (maybe), but it's just too inefficient from a
power standpoint. If the protocol is changed to a memory intensive proof-of-
work rather than power intensive, or perhaps to a proof-of-stake or other
means, then it may survive.

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cs702
Many are scratching their heads: "WTF? When will Bitcoin come crashing down?"

The thing is, if individual and institutional investors decide, in the
aggregate, that Bitcoin is a new kind of asset in which they want to have a
_tiny_ amount of exposure, the price could still go up much higher.

Investors worldwide currently own around $300 trillion in financial assets.[a]
If as a group they decide to hold, say, 2% of their wealth in Bitcoin, say, to
diversify away _from all countries on earth_ , then Bitcoin's marketcap would
go up 30x, from around $200 billion to $6 trillion. The number of bitcoins is
fixed, so the price would go by a similar multiple.

Note that before Bitcoin it was impossible to diversify away from all
countries on earth.

[a] [http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-
one-v...](http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-
visualization-2017/)

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c54
Interesting analysis! Question-- has gold been a way to diversify away from
all countries in the past?

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nindalf
At this point its no longer a currency. Steam stopped accepting it, and I
doubt anyone wants to buy anything with it. Its just a commodity, but one with
no underlying value, perhaps like tulip bulbs. I don't think this is going to
end well.

Which is a shame, because the blockchain is amazing technology.

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water_badger
Not trying to disagree with you overall, but the thing that always bothers me
about the tulip bulb analogy specifically (or beanie babies, comic books in
the 90s, etc.) is that tulip bulbs and beanie babies _did_ have underlying
value. A lot people wanted to own them because they were in some sense
fashionable objects. The demand brought in speculation and when it faltered
because of changing fashions the bubble burst.

No one is buying bitcoins to put them on a shelf because they're pretty. As
long as Bitcoin goes up or serves in some sense as a financial reserve it's
probably not going to "go out of fashion."

Of course Bitcoin may still be a bubble, but it would be a bubble for
different reasons.

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thisisit
Another fluff piece about - Bitcoin hits $x. Given the price now on
coinmarketcap, we might as well post - "Bitcoin hits $16,000" in couple of
hours.

What I seriously want this guys to write about: Where is the volume coming
from? Bitcoin has crossed 20k on the Zimbawean exchange Golix. So what is
happening now?

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pi-err
If you love market panics, you're going to love this one.

So many just bathing there with no swimsuit whatsoever.

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Unknoob
I wonder if now would be a good time to invest in ethereum or litecoin. I
mean, when the bitcoin bubble burst, will it drag down the price of other
cryptocurrencies or cause a mass migration to them?

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kypro
I recently got out of ETH despite being bullish on it longterm because Bitcoin
is almost certainly going to crash soon, and I personally believe it will
almost certainly add uncertainty into the legitimacy of the entire sector.

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eterm
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
> more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
> answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Whereas this article is the opposite, it has no content. It's just _trivia_.
There's nothing special about crossing $15k, particularly since most trade
isn't even denominated in USD.

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bhouston
The story is that it has risen 50% in less than a week. That is an insane
rise, and it isn't even fundamentals driven for the most part.

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paulpauper
man..many Bitcoin websites and APIs lagging and timing out big time

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bhouston
Just wait until it drops, most people will not be able to cash out until it is
likely worth nearly othing. There will be no automatic breaks (I think) that
usually happen on large stock market drops.

I think it may be technically possible for Bitcoin to drop 90% in a single day
and with most people unable to sell at any price if they want it settled on
the block chain.

It could be Armageddon with nearly everyone holding bitcoint getting wiped
out.

That MtGox guy should sell his billion of bitcoin soon, like right now. It is
a hot potato right now and I wouldn't want to be left holding the bag with
things go south.

I was a student in the first dotcom bubble and it was similar to this. And
people predicted it would drop and then it did drop and basically wiped out
the whole tech sector for nearly 3 years.

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laichzeit0
> There will be no automatic breaks (I think) that usually happen on large
> stock market drops

This is a very, very good thing. There are no breaks going up, therefore there
should be no breaks going down. What's even better is that Bitcoin is 24/7 so
there's not even the option of "waiting for the train to stop" when you're
trying to get off.

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bhouston
The breaks are there to stop panic selling. That is something that was
intensional and learned from the 1987 stock market crash.

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laichzeit0
Then there should equivalently be breaks to stop panic buying, not so?

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bhouston
They are for both directions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_curb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_curb)

The trading curbs are incredibly important because if there is false
information and everyone rushes to the exit, people can be wiped out in the
panic and then find out the next hour that nothing was true.

With bitcoin there will likely be settlement issues for days after a crash. It
will be messy as hell.

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paulpauper
No one disputes that it will fall at some point, but obv. no one knows when .

All it takes is for some of the major holders who accumulated before 2016 or
so to unload and the price will fall a lot.

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nindalf
It would correct a lot quicker if it was easy to short it.

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singularity2001
people thinking " Oh I just get out when the price starts falling" are utterly
mistaken:

Transactions now taking several hours might then take several days.

Already getting Error 520 on Kraken

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c0nducktr
Yeah when the price starts falling, the first thing that'll go down is the
exchanges, causing more panic. It's not like these sites don't go down all the
time anyway now, just wait until there's an actual panic.

