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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

Liquidity problems are an issue with exchanges, not Bitcoin itself. I can email you a Bitcoin instantly. Good luck doing that with a gold bar.

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On the other hand, gold will remain liquid in a situation where the technological fabric of current society breaks down. That kind of survivalist logic is one major reason why private individuals own gold.

If I keep Krugerrands stashed under my pillow because I expect Neo-Stalinists to one day take control of the continent and confiscate all property held in digital systems, it doesn't seem like Bitcoin will give me much peace of mind. Surely the New World Order will shut down my Internet access too?

(I could be wrong though. The Bitcoin maximalists are a weird bunch. I follow one such guy on Twitter, and he seems to post a lot of pictures of guns with USB sticks when he's not promising to take more Bitcoin tattoos or bashing Ethereum as "beta cuck fake coin".)

> I follow one such guy on Twitter, and he seems to post a lot of pictures of guns with USB sticks when he's not promising to take more Bitcoin tattoos or bashing Ethereum as "beta cuck fake coin".

There's a range of topics (money, power, sex, death) that do funny things to the human mind. When broaching said topics, most if not all people become unfathomably stupid in various ways.

Yes it's true, you can send bitcoin wallets through email. But only if you really must, which is never.

I'm not entirely sure how sending bitcoin wallets through email would solve liquidity issues though.

But again, you're right. The barbarous relic of forlorn ages can't be emailed. It must rely on the tentative lack of duplicator ray technology to avoid double spending problems.

> I can email you a Bitcoin instantly

Where by "instantly" you mean "takes at least an hour and costs a fortune"?

>Where by "instantly" you mean "takes at least an hour and costs a fortune"?

No. I could email the private keys for any amount of bitcoin to anyone on earth instantly. Or do it with morse code over a telegraph...or smoke signals, it doesn't matter. Transactions on the blockchain are a different issue entirely.

Without liquidity its point less and arguably worthless but you could transfer Gold ETFs electronically to me

BTC is pretty liquid. Tens of millions change hands hourly/daily.

The linked article even cites one hodlr that purchased a professional hockey team with his crypto profits.

$550M on just the Coinbase BTC-USD book in the past 24 hours. $1B on Bitfinex. Liquidity is currently very strong.

That is trading volume, not liquidity. And we should be wary of the trading volume on bitcoin exchanges, a lot of it is manipulated. (In particular, I would never trust any numbers coming from Bitfinex)

Coinbase is not a sketchy exchange by any means, and while I'm cautious about Bitfinex their volume is quite believable given they are the default choice for non US persons.

That's also why I quoted USD, if you include crypto-crypto volume and some of the zero fee exchanges it definitely becomes nonsense.

Ok...last 10 minutes proved your point. That was bananas.

What happened?

Coinbase added Bitcoin Cash to GDAX.

BTC plummeted from mid $17.8k to $14.9k in 15 minutes, now back to $16.6k. ETH from $857 to $700 same period, back to $771 now.

Good times...

Isn't there only 16m currently in circulation?

Edit: ah did you mean dollars?

Fiat liquidity will come once we get some more professional exchanges run doing bigger volumes.

The coin itself is of course quite liquid although transaction fees mean you aren't buying your weekly shopping with bitcoin. But maybe you can pay your monthly rent.

What's the difference between emailing it instantly, and doing a transaction that takes time and costs a transaction fee?

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