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Comment by mrb | Hacker News Reader

Plus Avalon just started shipping the first mining chip ( http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=70 ). And they announced they will only accept bitcoins as payment for the 2nd batch of 500 units @ $1500 ea, which starts selling tomorrow... That potentially means people buying $750k worth of bitcoins for a batch that will sell out really quickly. This will surely push the exchange rate even higher than $20.

Edit: there is no resistance upward right now on MtGox. $300k of buys would push to $24. $500k to $30. http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html

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We're getting into the speculation game again. I don't think this is healthy for Bitcoin. Let Bitcoin grow at its own pace instead of promoting articles that say Bitcoin is now at $18..and now at $20..and now at $24.

If you keep doing that, it will crash again, at least down to $15.

Speculation is a part of the free market :)

and what's wrong with that? bitcoin is currently more like a stock as the market is waaaaaay too small, and thus you cannot expect stability from it. it will soar, and it will crash, many many more times. but more importantly, it will survive all that and grow steadily in the long term. long term investors are not affected by these bubbles anyway.

If the rising dollar volume crossing the blockchain outpaces the rising exchange rate, then it is sustainable. The blockchain output cannot be estimated with certainty though so that will always be a best guesstimate.

But certainly the bulk of the value remains from speculative interest rather than organic demand for the coins for use in commerce.

And that's exactly what I want, since I can buy low again. :-P

If these ASICs are so efficient at mining Bitcoins I don't understand why Avalon doesn't just run them themselves rather than sell them?

Answer: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5142307

During a gold rush, don't be the guy digging for gold. Be the guy selling shovels.

This. People like Slush who take 2% of each chain block are making a killing, while the rest are burning a hole in their video cards.

For their sake, I hope that's the only thing.

http://buttcoin.org/bitcoin-mining-rigs-fire-and-electical-h...

Of course the reverse will be true as Avalon attempts to convert $750000 worth of BTC into USD. If they're smart they'll do it in small increments, but it will still have an effect

Likely they will convert a good chunk of it to CNY not USD. The price arbitrages will go back at USD and other currencies, but the effect is cushioned.

Also, being in China they are likely to keep a good part of the profit in BTC to use in services, since a lot is not allowed over there. This can kickstart a local BTC economy where it's needed the most.

I don't really understand economics at all, but with a $200M market cap (http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap), wouldn't $750k of bitcoins be just a blip? Or is it about rate of exchange?

It's about the rate of exchange. Out of the $200M of bitcoins, only a small fraction is available for sale on exchanges...

Ahh, that makes sense.

No doubt a large amount has been permanent lost. All it takes is for one early adopter with 100,000 bitcoins to lose their wallet a few years ago. those are gone for good now.

I never thought much about the effect of permanent loss on Bitcoin. Unlike cash, encrypted wallets and the block chain make theft harder than just destruction of the money.

A virus which deletes wallets instead of trying to exfiltrate BTC seems much easier to implement and would be pretty devastating for the currency.

Damaging but not fatal. Bitcoins are divisible down to 8 decimal places so the value would just scale up according to the reduced supply. And 8 decimal places is a software limit; a revised protocol could increase that.

That's what backups (and brainwallets, etc.) are for.

Sounds like bitcoin requires a backup system by default, then. Because otherwise, the first virus written by some pissy kid that just deletes wallets will devastate a lot of people.

At least you can back it up... unlike a real cash wallet.

It has been estimated on bitcointalk that around 1-2% have been lost. That's not really a large amount. You can still divide bitcoins into satoshis (1E-8) or even further with a protocol change in the future.

Out of curiosity, does this estimate account for stolen wallets, or are these still considered viable?

I did some research:

Around 0.6% of all Bitcoin are known to be lost, so with unknown losses it could be 1-2%(https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7253.120)

Excluding the Pirate scam, 2.9% have been stolen. These are still viable, some are tainted since the receiver address is known. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0)

I have a wallet with ~2,400BTC and I forgot my encryption passphrase. It was >400 chars and I know most of it but I'm making some mistake somewhere in my recall. If the value keeps going up I'm going to have to get serious about cracking that wallet.

I would think that roughly 50k USD would be enough incentive for most people to start remembering REALLY hard

I meant measures beyond remembering really hard. Writing software to brute force it with the bits I already know. Believe me I'm pretty unhappy about the situation.

Provisioning EC2 GPU instances and the like and writing the grammars.

a 400 char passphrase? dude, thats crazy.

If someone has the incentive to break into your wallet, all you need is a phrase long enough to make physical violence a better alternative for the attacker, and you're set, no need to make the phrase any longer.

It is about rate of exchange. Market prices mean, that at this price at least one buyer meets one seller. All the people thinking that the price is too low or too high, who therefore do not buy or sell, do not change the price at all.

I find this one more useful: http://mtgoxlive.com/orders

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