2. South Korea cut off access to banks by cryptocurrency exchanges in December, and access to exchanges by foreign traders. As a result the prices in the country spiked, and the largest price aggregator CoinMarketCap removed Korean exchanges from the index because they were skewing the averages. This caused ~$150B to appear to have suddenly vanished, gapping prices down. This is when the sell-off began in earnest. Then recently the South Korean Minister of Justice said he wants to shut down exchanges, but then the PM says that would require a vote in the National Assembly on new legislation. They are consulting with Japan (who are positive on crypto) and China (who are not) to create a new regulatory framework. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180116000817
4. France's central bank has been whining about cryptocurrency for some time and finally convinced the Minister of Finance to make a public statement and authorize a draft of new regulations. https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/905169/bitcoin-France...
5. A speculative theory: the Bitcoin futures contracts are about to expire, and some investors will have bet on lower BTC prices. There could be large market players deliberately pushing prices down to meet those futures bets. Or just market makers wanting to get in at a lower price point.
Or just price manipulation by big holders. External factors/news are often regarded as the cause of dips and gains, while other, often simpler reasons remain under appreciated.
How would you define "overvalued"? Is it the current average price compared to a very low price three months from now? What if it recovers a few weeks after that — would that change the fact that it was once "overvalued"? Valuation is not based on nothing, in vacuum. The challenge is to understand the underlying factors. The post you replied to actually tried to shed some light.
The difference between the price of bitcoin versus the price of bitcoin as it would be if it was only used as a medium of exchange rather than a speculative asset.
No, the energy required is a function of the price, not the other way around.
The bitcoin network adjusts the block difficulty (effectively the energy required to mine 1 BTC) every 2016 blocks such that the rate of creating blocks is fixed at one block (currently 12.5 BTC) every ten minutes.
If the dollar value of energy required to mine 1 BTC is significantly less than the current dollar value of a bitcoin then it is likely more hash power will be added to the network by the bitcoin farms, further increasing the network's hash rate, and as a consequence the block difficulty and therefore the price of the energy required to mine 1 BTC.
I thought most people, even the hard-core believers, were waiting for a correction. The previous times Bitcoin grew so exponentially it was always followed with a hard crash, though this time it's taking a bit longer.
Yes theres that, but BTC being overvalued doesn't explain the entire market dip that we are seeing now. However, it is consistent with Bitcoin's historical pattern:
> 3. Indonesia just banned cryptocurrency transactions, stating only their native currency is legal tender.
Nitpick:
Butcoin is not, to my knowledge, legal tender anywhere. What Indonesia has done is declare that all transactions in Indonesia must be denominated in rupiah. This is far more restrictive than most Weatern nations where private parties may accept anything they want as payment, but must accept legal tender in certain circumstances.
> This is crypto logic. In 'real' stocks this will be called a collapse for today or at least an extremely wild ride.
It is a wild ride. The reason this is a correction and not a collapse can be easily understood if you zoom out your charts enough so that you can see the ancient times of November 2017.
It's just a matter of volatility. If a stock drops by 15-20% once a month, a correction is not called a collapse. If it never moves more than 2-3% per day, a 15% drop causes panic.
BTC is by far the most volatile asset at the moment (excluding other crypto currencies and some exotic real currencies). I think the reason people talk about crashes so quickly is that no one has a clue what's going on. Is it a broad-based move? Is it a few speculators? Is it a conspiracy? For stocks, at least the regulator knows very quickly who sold and if there's something fishy going on. For BTC, no one knows which makes it more confusing.
according to reuters, "Bitcoin extends slide to trade down 18 percent on day at $11,191 on Bitstamp Exchange, on track for biggest one-day fall in three years" - so, pretty significant move.
There are a bunch of coins that lost over 20% in 24h, and the 7d-situation looks even worse with even huge coins like Ripple taking a 45% drop in value.
The December 23 'collapse' so far was bigger, however there is some significant market momentum which I found easier to grasp here: https://cryptowat.ch/
This site lists 1450 different cryptocurrencies. I wonder how many of them can be used as actual currency. Bitcoin adoption has stalled and at least one big vendor (valve/steam) dropped it because of the price instability.
1. Bitcoin remains speculative and volatile. This will cause it to be adopted by smaller businesses that can "do things that don't scale". We won't see big businesses support mainstream crypto payments until the demand is high enough to justify the risk.
2. Bitcoin itself is a clamped network, as such the fees are very high. You can't sell Lemonade at your stand with Bitcoin if the fees are much greater than the cost of a cup of lemonade.
Other cryptocurrencies aim to solve these problems.
> We won't see big businesses support mainstream crypto payments until the demand is high enough to justify the risk.
There is also a risk with accepting credit card payments, which is part of the reason why businesses don't actually process credit card payments themselves. They outsource that to a specialized third party that deals with the risks, like Stripe. The same thing is true for Bitcoin; almost every online store uses BitPay, who take care of the claimed volatility risk.
(Also, there was a pretty stable three-year period for Bitcoin from early 2014 to late 2016 or so. Widespread adoption failed to materialize, so it's not like "once it's stable it will miraculously be adopted by everyone".)
> the fees are very high
Yep. Fees, delays, and unreliability are the actual problems of the moment.
They guarantee the vendor a certain rate for a time window of 15 minutes or so. If the buyer makes a payment within this time frame and gets at least one confirmation (which is the buyer's gamble), BitPay pays the vendor immediately in USD (or other fiat). I guess they have USD reserves to make these payments and restock them by converting part of their Bitcoin holdings from time to time. If Bitcoin collapses completely, they blow up. Though even their risk is controlled because they can stop processing payments at any moment.
Rubbish. I live in the EU and buy stuff from the States on a semi regular basis. Shipping costs are usually the deciding factor, card fees are insignificant.
People keep saying that. I wonder if they have actually read the white paper. The lightning network will only work for exchanges who will keep channels open between them. Getting a graph of every wallet connected to every other wallet is a mathematical impossibility.
The lightning network is essentially instituting central banking all over again, this time with bitcoin. "Oh so you want to transfer coins quickly? Better keep them at well connected exchange so it can be instantaneous, and you'll only be transferring between exchanges by the way."
> The lightning network will only work for exchanges who will keep channels open between them. Getting a graph of every wallet connected to every other wallet is a mathematical impossibility.
Transactions can be routed through multiple channels, you don't need to open a channel to every single wallet you want to transact with. That would not be a Lightning network, it would just be payment channels.
> The lightning network is essentially instituting central banking all over again, this time with bitcoin. "Oh so you want to transfer coins quickly? Better keep them at well connected exchange so it can be instantaneous, and you'll only be transferring between exchanges by the way."
Not even close to central banking, LN transacts real Bitcoins, not IOU's, so they can't print more base money or more debt-based money. There's also no trust needed (no counter-party risk and you can route around censorship attempts)
1 point by fgonzag 0 minutes ago | edit | delete [-]
I know you can chain multiple channels. I've read the paper. Anyone with a relatively basic math background can see the problems the lightning network will not work as a "decentralized" network.
So you'll end up with many hubs, and you'll have to open a channel from your wallet to a hub (or multiple hubs) if you want to be able to pay or receive payments from (insert random wallet here). These hubs will take a cut to process payments. The more hops you have between two wallets, the more fees you'll have to pay (as you'll have to pay a fee for each hop). We just turned into VISA and Mastercard.
That's without mentioning the high capital reserve requirements that hubs will be forced to have, and how easy it would be to DDOS a specific hub by abusing the nLoc timer, especially since the transaction can only be forced to close if the only pending acknowledgement is from the originating wallet. Every other hop can essentially hold off for 1 day.
As I understand it, bitcoin is a ledger scheme. There no "coins" per se. Which means it's very much like how banking works in practice: everyone keeps their own books and leaves the credits and debits on them. Real funds don't change hands all that often, it's easier just to keep the running tally if you trust your counterparty.
Of course, trusting your counterparty requires you to know who they are, have stable addresses and so on.
You're basically right except with payment channels you mostly don't have to trust the counterparty.
The simplest case is a unidirectional channel. To pay you a series of micropayments, I send a series of transactions with each one slightly larger, so each is the sum of all my payments. You can only submit one such transaction to the blockchain. I lock my funds so you don't have to worry they won't be available.
Bidirectional channels and networking are elaborations on this idea. In bidirectional channels the main risk is that your counterparty will submit an obsolete state; there has to be a delay and you have to monitor the chain so you can submit a more recent state if that happens. You don't have to know who the counterparty is.
(Your analogy to a ledger with account balances is precisely correct for Ethereum, but Bitcoin actually has a somewhat different model.)
If I'm reading you, the idea is to essentially to negotiate out-of-band? I remember reading something like this in Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies with a note saying nobody had tried it in practice.
> (Your analogy to a ledger with account balances is precisely correct for Ethereum, but Bitcoin actually has a somewhat different model.)
My understanding is that in bitcoin it's a log of transactions -- a ledger. Ethereum is instead addresses holding totals -- more like an account statement.
I guess I've been misusing the term "ledger." You're exactly right for Ethereum. Bitcoin has transactions with "unspent outputs." Each transaction can have multiple inputs and outputs; to make a transaction you collect unspent outputs from previous transactions, use them as your inputs, and typically make two outputs, one to the payee address and one that holds the change.
Not only is the "network" part of LN referring to the ability to chain multiple channels together to make payments several hops away if needed, but why would exchanges be the only one you could transfer to?
Currently on mainnet a VPN vendor is really the only major player, and it's expected that most vendors will have a lighting node, as all it requires is an always online server...
Not to mention that transacting over LN has no counterparty risk, and "keeping a graph of every connected wallet" is not an impossibility... It uses the TOR protocol which runs over IP, which are both the kinds of networks of channels you imply are impossible here...
It sounds like you read the first 2 paragraphs of the paper and decided to stop. Read more, and these details will be explained in excruciating detail.
Because you might need to pay someone? How do you know beforehand all the wallets you are going to transact with? (Assuming we are talking about using it as a currency anyways)
There's no ETA, people can start using it right now if they want (some crazy people are already using it on main net) but the developers don't consider it safe and stable enough to use with real money (only recommended on test-net right now)
So is a piece of paper with fancy printing on it that says ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
Currency is an abstraction. It is a social contract to value something at a certain level. That contract is enforced at the highest levels in our county which is why it works so well.
But make no mistake, $100 can buy stuff because only because we all agree to value it at about the same level. If the government collapses, that piece of paper's only worth is how much warmth it will give you when you set it on fire.
Do you really wanna compare private company with legitimate government?
Which private company has such a power and credit backed by gigantic land & properties, all the resources from those land, super control from police, military forces?
Present value of legitimate tender is printed on it's face and legitimate government CAN force it. Never, ever confront to big brother.
Don't be childish. Grow up. If you are not humble, the market will humble you.
Novice crypto question... I read a comment here about 1 month ago someone predicted a correction of BTC value to mind january because some coins would "expire" then. I'm trying to find the comment now to learn more. Anyone have any insight what I'm talking about?
Perhaps it was not BTC or cryptocurrencies expiring but "investors" (gamblers) betting that X or Y commodity's value (gold, oil, USD, EUR, BTC?) will be on $Z, and the closer they places their bet on value Z the more money they make.
They're talking about futures contracts, which are created with explicit end dates for delivery (or "delivery") of the underlying asset. I believe first officially listed and traded Bitcoin futures contracts were issues in December, and (some?) have expiration dates around now.
Prices around expiration dates can get quite volatile, as traders with large positions maneuver to maximize profit or minimize loss.
Coinmarketcap shows prices in USD while most cryptos are trading against BTC, so what you’re seeing is mainly the drop of BTC against the dollar. Coins are also dropping against BTC of course, but not all of them, you can see that in an exchange like binance
They were, but, in the last few minutes the last hour numbers have all gone green. They were definitely all red when I checked this half an hour ago.
I think the whole thing is a scam and that it is incredible the willingness of people to be scammed. Yes I see merit in a decent online currency that works like cash but securely, however, these crypto things are speculative tulip stocks in a book-keeper's window and the people that have bought into it are very much in a cult of their own devising. It is comical. When fools rush in.
Not that I think it's a scam, but lets ignore that part for a moment. This market is a swing traders dream. 40% swings means there is a ton of money to be gamed off.
How much are cryptocurrencies are used for actual exchange of goods? I.e. for actual shopping and commerce? Because it seems to me that the most prominent group of users are investors and miners; i.e. those who only buy, stack and sell crypto coins, and those who produce them. And I've read here in some past threads that it's not that easy to liquidify your crypto coins.
It will get better, I like to draw parallels to the dotcom bubble–sooner or later we'll see a real collapse and the coins that are actually worth something will rise from the dust. Just like how Amazon and eBay did. This could take a year or three though.
Exactly, a +10% drop in a day is pretty newsworthy for the DOW and wouldn't be called just a correction. Cryptomarkets aren't the DOW, you're more than free to check the yearly charts on coinmarketcap.com, what we're seeing right now is not unusual for the market, and I'm saying this as someone who's been heavily involved for multiple years.
Past experience would suggest a double digit move either way isn't surprising. But equally, it's not correcting anything as there's no meaningful book value to correct to.
These are likely just fairly arbitrary moves that will be followed by other arbitrary moves.
As the markets are almost completely opaque, unless you're the person dumping, attempts at attribution are mostly futile.
Isn't that just exactly the same as 'hype', in the opposite direction? Clearly the logical approach is neither to follow the hype, nor shy away from it, but to ignore it altogether.
Not quite. We see ordinary people "invest" in what we perceive as gambling at best and a scam at worst and are infuriated by how various people, media etc are egging them on.
The Washington Post had it right in 2015 even though they didn't even use the neologism "hodl":
> - Hey, do you want to hear about the future? It's a digital currency called Bitcoin that lets you spend or move your money online without paying any fees. - Sounds great. How does it do that? - Well, Bitcoin saves you money by making transactions irreversible. - So ... if I get scammed, I got scammed? There's nothing I can do about it? - Yes. -
Okay, but is it at least easy to use? - The thing is, I don't actually use it. I just hoard it. I'm waiting for some greater fools to push up the price by using theirs. - Oh. -
Yeah. So you should buy some Bitcoins and use yours.
This is nothing but a scam. We don't want people to be scammed.
> Well, Bitcoin saves you money by making transactions irreversible
How does it do that? Irreversible transactions allow the currency to be decentralised, but I don't think they were even intended to be a means of saving money.
> So ... if I get scammed, I got scammed? There's nothing I can do about it?
Market is so driven by news which has 0 credible sources it's amazing. I consider this a sales period as it's just shaking out the weak hands, the ones that are here for the quick buck. This was dubbed as "Alt coin season sales" but make no mistake, the tokens which hold no technical value will dissapear.
Just to clarify the Bloomberg article: OTC/P2P trading is not banned in China, but match-making services are more similar to a private exchanges. It's those match-making services that are now being targetted in China. It's about unlicensed trading, not about blockchain / tokens.
It seems impossible to understand the fluctuations of the market as it is now. Finding no specific article that explains what this could be due to. Should probably just stick to regular investments.
It was impossible to understand motions of celestial objects as well. I think this is typical market correction we see when something is undergoing adoption. Much like turbulence, we will see oscillations of people who want to transition between fiat and cryptocurrency. Human psychology (FOMO/FUD) tends to drive those oscillations as well. This isn't surprising since cryptocurrency is a speculative, unknown and misunderstood area -- people will be driven through emotions and irrational thought rather than sound utility or value based investment.
It may not be a single cause (like a single article) but it could be that the overall sentiment of the web is decreasing, which is causing people to get scared and sell their coins. One would have to actually calculate this.
But this oscillation is very real. For example, we can see positive sentiment come out, and other humans make it their job to fill the web with counteracting negative sentiment, etc. There are many complex factors that go into the price, and the web is merely a fraction of the input into the algorithm.
1. China cracking down harder: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/01/16/business/16reuter...
2. South Korea cut off access to banks by cryptocurrency exchanges in December, and access to exchanges by foreign traders. As a result the prices in the country spiked, and the largest price aggregator CoinMarketCap removed Korean exchanges from the index because they were skewing the averages. This caused ~$150B to appear to have suddenly vanished, gapping prices down. This is when the sell-off began in earnest. Then recently the South Korean Minister of Justice said he wants to shut down exchanges, but then the PM says that would require a vote in the National Assembly on new legislation. They are consulting with Japan (who are positive on crypto) and China (who are not) to create a new regulatory framework. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20180116000817
3. Indonesia just banned cryptocurrency transactions, stating only their native currency is legal tender. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/01/15/bank-indonesia...
4. France's central bank has been whining about cryptocurrency for some time and finally convinced the Minister of Finance to make a public statement and authorize a draft of new regulations. https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/905169/bitcoin-France...
5. A speculative theory: the Bitcoin futures contracts are about to expire, and some investors will have bet on lower BTC prices. There could be large market players deliberately pushing prices down to meet those futures bets. Or just market makers wanting to get in at a lower price point.