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Comment by gardaani | Hacker News Reader

According to Binance, Bitcoin just went down from $42k to $30k in 2 hours. Elon Musk selling his cryptocurrencies??

Its due to that, automated selling probably, but mostly because of China adding increased scrutiny. CN is one of the biggest bases of bitcoin:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/investing/bitcoin-price-drop-...

Bitcoin is a "decentralized" digital currency.

Only if hashrate is decentralized, and it's not. A significant portion of all hashrate is in China.

That's largely dependent on the ebb and flow of hydraulic power

Much in the same way as how North Korea is a democratic people's republic.

Well, China was very close of getting over 50% of hash rate, so this news is good for Bitcoin... /s

Those following the GME saga believe it’s Wall Street banks scrambling to find liquidity in response to emergency rule changes by the OCC.

It’s fascinating stuff to follow — watch the VIX today, a measure of stock market volatility. It’s absolutely soaring already.

The GME saga is over outside of fervent believers who cannot accept that Wall Street did not tumble because one small hedge fund made a bad bet.

Following WSBs is like the new QAnon.... some 'event' is always a few days away.

At this point the true believers are one more "short squeeze" missed deadline away from being recruited by cults and militia groups.

The volume of Bitcoin is over $100B sometimes. It's over $75B in the last 24 hours.

There are several days in the last month, according to Tether, with AT LEAST $500M of inflows.

A single $1B of outflows shouldn't tank a market like this by 40%...

It’s what happens when the entire vehicle is speculation. I know the plan and the desire is for Bitcoin to be used as an alternative payment method but it isn’t fit for purpose. The people investing in it are doing so purely on a speculative basis, so you’d better believe plenty will cash out at the first sign of a dip.

Can you please point me a source where Bitcoin is "desired" as a payment method? It's seen more of a store of value, not used for paying for everyday things.

You’re asking for a source to prove that people want to use a cryptocurrency as currency? Feels a little like asking for a scientific paper proving that fish swim in water.

I would also love to have that source. Any statistics on % of crypto used for actual transactions vs only for trading?

The "store of value" thing was made up to keep the speculation bubble inflating when it became clear Bitcoin had no practical use.

Isn't the revisionist history amazing? All of the other use cases (e.g. smart contracts) are proven failures and now the original use case (payment method) is also clearly a failure, so the narrative shifts to "it was never intended to be a payment method, only a store of value". A store of value that can drop 40% in days, BTW, another failed use case.

Sure!

The original Bitcoin whitepaper from Satoshi Nakamoto is available here: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

It is titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System"

So, based just on the title, it's pretty clear that it's original intent was as an electronic payment method.

The first sentence of the abstract is: "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution"

If you read the rest of the whitepaper it's pretty clear that the original intent was as a mechanism to facilitate payments and transactions.

That's BSV, maybe. Bitcoin core deviated from the original white paper long long ago

Are you arguing that the original Bitcoin whitepaper is invalid as a source of whether Bitcoin is "desired" as a payment method?

Clearly, at least one person (the author of the whitepaper!) "desired" Bitcoin as a payment method. They desired it so much, that they went off an invented it!

If that doesn't count as a source indicating what someone "desires" then nothing does.

It's not about it being valued as a currency for its objective characteristics, but rather based on the limitless enthusiasm of crackpot ideology

Crypto markets are manipulated AF, nobody knows how much the "real" volume is.

In this case the volume is pretty irrelevant. If nobody wants to buy at the current price, and there are people willing to sell for a penny less than the current price, the price will drop. $1B or $10B of outflows can have the same price movement.

>A single $1B of outflows shouldn't tank a market like this by 40%...

It depends what kind of market you think it is. The fact is there's no economic fundamental supporting the value of Bitcoin, so it's value is just whatever speculators are willing to pay at any given time.

Unless big players know something about Tether that most people don't https://coingeek.com/tether-reaches-new-lows-in-quest-to-avo...

Crypto is an... interesting market. The vast majority of trades are done by bots. Some external event causes BTC to swing and bots key off that, magnifying the effect. When it’s a REALLY big event like today and people are trying to cash out, the effect feeds on itself.

Does the stock market work similarly? From what I understand about 4/5 of all trading done today is automated.

He already did: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1394001894809427971

No, he didn't https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1394170030741413888

Oh, I missed that one, thanks

He was responding to the "I wouldn't blame him" part - the following day he posted that Tesla had not sold any, and he's stated that they plan to accept BTC as payment in the future once more of the mining is transitioned to renewable energy. [0][1]

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1394170030741413888

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/16/elon-musk-suggests-tesla-is-...

He clarified later that he did not. Let's not over estimate his tweets, other forces are at play.

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