Bitcoin, the Biggest Bubble in History, Is Popping | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin, the Biggest Bubble in History, Is Popping

bloomberg.com

21 pointssamsgro31 comments

What a silly article. The metric they use for reaching the conclusion that bitcoin is the biggest (??) bubble in history is... peak multiple of an arbitrarily defined "starting value"...

I don't know what's worse, the cargo cult of bitcoin or the reactionary hate.

doesn't even qualify as an article. just a chart of some bubbles that have popped implying that bitcoin is the same

And what kind of idiot (I mean, financially uneducated person) does one have to be to plot that on a linear scale (instead of logarithmic)...

I find the cargo cult of reactionary hate to be pretty bad. People hate and hate on Bitcoin whenever and then invariably get louder when the price is down. What’s worse are the flip floppers :).

Viewed on a logarithmic scale it looks like an adjustment back to the trend-line:

https://blockchain.info/en/charts/market-price?timespan=all&...

Why would it make more sense to look at this as log and not linear?

Because of how exponential growth works, regardless of whether you consider inflation, or the price of stocks or commodities to be more relevant to the discussion of bitcoin.

Bitcoin is worth 5x what it was this time last year. BoA is huffing glue.

Why?

Understanding of Bitcoin surely can be modeled, and the price and hash rate are parts of that proxy model. Can its uptake be compared to other challenging ideas, such as global climate change, or propagation of more effective forms of government? Does this form of bubble, crash (but not as far), slow up-take, and re-bubble (3x now for Bitcoin) compare at all to how other disruptive concepts have been propagated?

That's the most absurd article ever. With 3 lines of text and laughable graph. "Years from peak". There have been so many peaks in the history of Bitcoin, what is the reason to think this is the final one? No word on that.

But hey, let's talk about Bitcoin? Why not! It's super interesting. I think there is not enough real debate about it on HN!

I think we are facing a massive wave of change due to the crypto technology that is currently developed. I expect it will be as big or bigger then the internet. But I am skeptical about Bitcoins share in the long run. I doubt we really need the mining. I expect that there will be new technologies that enable crypto without proof of work. And they will become strong competition to Bitcoin.

However, the market is so enormous that even with a small market share, Bitcoin could be worth the $100B it is currently traded for.

Excellent, I can't wait for accellerated climate change & global warming from even more mining! /s

This seems like fanboyism and marketing. Crypto around for 9-10 years now and I haven't seen it change anything in the world for the better. I worked for exchanges and worked on multiple crypto projects, but due to the nature of the cryptocurrency community being extremely toxic, I could no longer handle the death threats and pulled out of crypto entirely. Feel free to name something that it's changed. What do you think it's going to change and how?

As I said, I think mining will be replaced with new, yet to be developed technologies.

Random example of what will change: Autonomous companies. Remember the DAO? That was a first glimpse of the future. As an investor, you put money in via a crypto transaction and then you have voting power over the actions of the company.

For one thing, it's much easier to buy drugs on the internet now. People can use it to skirt capital controls. It may have some uses in money laundering. You can gamble with crypto much more easily than with a credit card. These may or may not be positive things, depending on your point of view, but they are things that have changed.

If the Internet is a series of tubes, well, Bitcoin is a series of bubbles.

With each one getting progressively bigger. Does that mean it is constantly popping but sometimes inflating more than it is popping?

You only have two samples. Not exactly a fantastic sample size.

There are 2 other major ones in 2011 and start of 2013, so sample size 4.

I'm only seeing two major rises when looking at the price chart (ALL). 2011 didn't make it past $20 and and 2013 was its rise to the Mt. Gox scam.

Are you also accounting for Mt. Gox creating the first one in Dec 2013? Technically, there was only one real big non-manufactured rise and it happened in late 2017.

You have a sample size of 1.

Sounds like it's time to buy.

Good. Maybe I can start shopping for graphics cards again.

Graphics cards haven't been relevant to bitcoin in a long time, unless you mean the ripple effect this might have on the price of other cryptos.

The graphics card I want retails for $700. It is getting more and more possible to find it at that price, but NEWEGG is still charging $1,000 for it.

So I think its a little premature to say that Graphics Cards unaffected by crypto.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/cryptocurrency-minin...

> So I think its a little premature to say that Graphics Cards unaffected by crypto.

The person you responded to said "graphics cards haven't been relevant to bitcoin" (not crypto)

Bitcoin isn't mined with GPUs any more. The GPU shortage is because of the ethereum hype which is strongly linked to bitcoin hype.

Most other cryptos are heavily linked to Bitcoin's price. If the Bitcoin bubble bursts, it's fairly safe to say miners are going to start dumping the mining equipment used for other coins, so yes, the ripple effect.

It’s funny because the ripple effect affects even the Cryptocurrency called Ripple that doesn’t and never used GPu mining.

GPU prices dropped 25% in March: https://wccftech.com/nvidia-amd-gpu-prices-down-25-in-march-...

The bitmain ethereum asic is probably a large factor: https://www.coindesk.com/bitmain-confirms-release-first-ever...

One important thing to know that many are not aware, is that banks don't trade on their public research. Because it's useless. Nobody made any money trading banks research ever.

If you have a real investment idea, you don't broadcast it to the world.

Is it 'popping' or has it popped? The other example bubbles don't all drop to zero. Notably that 'gold' bubble (that I admit I've never heard of). I'll say it has popped with certainty only when it's been years and the price hasn't risen again.

Also what's with the Mississippi Company value having distinctive step-like patterns? I assume they represent the banks refusing to pay for long periods

This kind of volatility is nothing new for Bitcoin. This kind of volatility in an asset with that market cap is fairly rare.

Is it just me or does that read - Mulriple from starting levels? If yes, that is some poorly written and edited report.

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