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Comment by xutopia | Hacker News Reader

Linkbait. That's not a crash... it can go down a few percentage point in a day but the long term trends all show increases.

Over the last week it's still better that what index funds have done in the last compounded 2 years.

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It's a currency. It's not supposed to go up and down like a stock. It is supposed to remain stable.

I'd argue that crypto currencies are a fundamentally new asset class, neither fish nor fowl. To become a useful "currency," yes, stability is a desirable quantity. What it is "supposed" to do is not a useful concept here. What it does is much more important. Currently, bitcoin is still more a highly-speculative, bubble-prone asset class with some of the qualities of a currency, some of the qualities of a stock, and some of the qualities of an asset like gold. It is incorrect to pigeon-hole it as any one of these.

It was supposed to be a currency it's a commodity.

This explanation I can buy. Nobody is treating like a currency. They keep wanting it to appreciate because they see it a cool tech-related commodity.

Agreed. Seems like its a commodity to be traded, a black market currency for criminal activity (i am not bothered by this), a currency for countries that need a way to buy goods outside there normal means. All the currency aspects are really cool especially as a means of freedom BUT its value is 100% based on speculation and trading not because of real value.

It is cool and i am not hating on it and people are getting rich from it but it's value isn't because all of a sudden average people are using it to buy groceries or pay their bills.

> isn't because all of a sudden average people are using it to buy groceries or pay their bills.

Now that it's in the media: why couldn't this quickly and quietly become reality?

I suspect that's related to the high degree of speculation and the lack of commodity backing.

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