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Comment by Erikun | Hacker News Reader

Can’t read the article, what makes 20 000 a key threshold?

It's roughly what the 2017 all time high was. The meme was that it wouldn't matter at what price you bought your BTC because if you just wait long enough you would eventually be green again. But, with dipping below 20K now, folks that bought at the peak in 2017 would be in the red again.

In march 2020 it dipped as low as 4k[0] and nobody batted an eye. I thought if it stayed there for long enough it'd finally burst, but then the prices soared up to 70k.

I'm surprised everyone's acting like it hadn't been down below 20k since 2017. Sure, it wasn't for long, but it did happen in 2020.

[0] Before posting I looked it up and what I'm finding is a lowest in 2020 of $4,861.32 for March 12th. I vaguely remember lower numbers, but this is aggregated data, so it might've been lower during the day but that was the closing price or the mean or something. I'm still sticking with the 4k number for quick reference, though you can take it as 5k if you want -- it's still a lot lower than the 20k that's making the news currently.

A flash crash (an order book getting dried up) is a form of glitch. It's very different from having the market price BTC at 20k for real.

I guess my issue might be with the wording, and there clearly are a few technical reasons why this is surprising. I think what is being told is that "since it rised in price late 2020, Bitcoin has been consistently priced over 20k, the previous ATH, and now has gone below that value", which would be clearer to those of us who aren't daily into this.

Folks who bought at an all time high and didn't sell lower, aren't likely to sell now. They understand the phrase 'buy low, sell high' from experience.

If they're still holding I don't think they quite understand the "sell high" part.

Mind you, technical analysis is a self-fulfilling prophecy. People tend to buy into “lines of resistance” and “lines of support”, and then they place orders around those milestone / psychological prices. You can literally see it on the order book. (Not to mention conditional orders)

I wonder if the effect is magnified in assets with higher retail market share (e.g. meme stocks and crypto)

Essentially: The mere symbolism of it. People ascribe a bit more meaning to such 'round' numbers, and since you are in a market with other people that do the same, it actually starts to make sense to see them as important markers at some point. (That's been my personal explanation for it, anyway.)

Emotion. BTC and others have the gold rush effect on people, so there is enough emotional energy in crypto to match the funds and electrical energy being poured into it. The ride up was an elation and the ride down will be something aswell.

same as 420 for TSLA stock

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