Ask HN: It used to be that when stocks fall, Bitcoin goes up. What happened? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: It used to be that when stocks fall, Bitcoin goes up. What happened?

10 pointstraviagio17 comments

There are too many factors to tease out what's going on at any given moment. There may be upward pressure from what's happening in equity markets and demand for bitcoin as a vehicle currency[1] to get ether, and there may be downward pressure because of a possible hard fork as well as the outage of a major exchange.

If you really knew what caused what with the bitcoin price, that'd be really special information and you'd be a very special person.

You can make your best guesses as to which forces will dominate. And you can be wrong.

These dynamics change as the scope changes.

[1] http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_vehicle_currency

Bitcoin is so thinly traded that it's hard to say anything useful on price movements and outside events.

Look at the spam attack - Bitcoin was all but unusable, and the price went up.

This? http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-slumps-following-bitfi...

I am not talking about a temporary flashcrash. People used to think of Bitcoin as a safe heaven when else goes downhill. Just like gold. I don't think that's the case anymore.

> People used to think of Bitcoin as a safe heaven when else goes downhill

I don't really think this is true. There might be some bitcoin enthusiasts who hold this view, but I haven't seen any evidence of this belief in the wider finance community.

I thought bitcoin went up on hype, down on fear. Opening up China markets, for example pushed the price up to over $1000. Then that hype died, along with MtGox and here we are.

> Opening up China markets, for example pushed the price up to over $1000.

I thought it was pretty established that (a) that was Willybot (b) there was no exchange you could actually get dollars out (so, not Mt. Gox) of where the price was over $1000.

(a) seems to be the generally accepted reason behind the runup to $1200 but (b) is patently false. I sold coins on coinbase and mtgox during this period and received deposits of USD within the week. The amounts were all below the six figure mark, so perhaps there were individuals with million dollar or more holdings that had issues finding instant liquidity. However, I imagine this is true of almost all assets of comparable size.

When were you getting money out of Mt Gox up to?

I cashed out all of my bitcoin holdings during the boom times so I can't speak for anything past October of 2013, but I believe Gox was still cashing out to USD until mid December or so(?) and Yen for a few weeks past that.

Honestly, anybody that left USD or BTC funds in Gox wallets for longer than a day deserved to lose them at that point in time. All the reasons were known then just as they are now-- if you don't personally hold and secure the private key, you don't actually own bitcoin. If you can't handle securing it (both from theft and loss) you shouldn't participate in the market as a speculator.

yeah, that accords with other reports I've heard - that you could still get USD out of Mt. Gox up to October and past that it was a bit iffy.

Ok maybe a robot trader did it (with the help of the pump and dump strategists that follow such bubbles), but it certainly wasn't anything to do with the real economy, which supports my original point.

If I remember correctly, the price went over $1k on Btc-e and you could get your money out, but it was always certainly trading lower than a Goxcoin.

I stand corrected! I do recall the other exchanges being about $200 below Mt. Gox ... though they still tracked its blatantly fraudulent prices.

Andresen and Hearn are forking the blockchain. The future of bitcoin thus becomes clouded.

Perhaps we have finally found the one thing that, apparently, is not good for Bitcoin.

Gold was also down today.

Silver and gold both seem to be dropping lower than they've been in years. Legend has it that when stocks go down, precious metals should go up. But what if gold, silver, and stocks were all in a bubble at once? They all kind of look bubbly by the long-term charts. Would that signify that we're finally reaching the end of the recession, or that we're beginning a new one?

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