Bitcoin down 60% to $100
bitstamp.net
bitstamp.net
Thought it might be my browser, so I tried logging in with Firefox, hit "Sell at Bid Price" - Which, about 30 seconds after my first attempt with chrome was now $175.
Something is going to crash spectacularly when you get a $40 swing on something like this in 30 seconds.
I still can't sell my BitCoins though. The Irony is I had 20 of them left over from playing around a couple years ago on a linode VPS - they are actually worth quite a bit, if I could only sell them. I wonder how many other people out there are checking to see if they still have a .bitcoin directory sitting around on their various linux systems...
Looks like a good opportunity for an alternative exchange...
But - seriously, I wonder how many people on HN alone have a .bitcoin directory with a wallet and a few stray coins that they've forgotten about over the years. Time to login to all those VPS/VMware/Linux hosts and do some housecleaning - it's like coinstars on steroids.
Mtgox trading engine lag: 3865.59s
With gyrations like that and one hour order execution lag there isn't a regulator in the world that wouldn't halt that market. Comparing this to investing in a roulette game would be unfairly characterizing the risks in roulette.
After all the noise dies down, new businesses and services get built backed by the wider audience, and the ecosystem develops further.
It's not yet clear if this is a crash similar to the previous one, but if it comes, I don't think much will change in terms of Bitcoin's future for the next few years.
What is this, "too small to fail"?!
Smooth the line and bitcoins are doing exactly what you'd expect from a linear-demand-growth emerging commodity market with a fixed rate of supply. Everything is going exactly according to plan.
Note well that the exact same thing (a big speculative run-up and follow-up correction) happened a couple years ago for the $0.50 to $29 spike, and will probably happen again for the inevitable $300 to $1500 run-up.
Worth observing that the opposite swing, where BTC shoots up $50 in ten minutes or whatever, is just as harmful.
It's really only a big deal for speculators, or people who are trying to run a btc-in-from-customers, btc-out-to-vendors business. SR is probably pretty interesting today.
I think a half of one percent is pretty good for something that finally solved the centralization problem for digital currency and has only been really useful for a couple of years. It will, of course, continue to get better with time as the size of the market increases.
This big flux could well have been caused by a single old-school miner/collector dumping $1-2mm of BTC in one batch, too. Remember, these markets aren't really that big yet.
And to be clear - what is it that you expect? A long-term per-unit appreciation in "value"?
First sell-off - late 2011 whne the price dropped from $30 to $5.
Enthusiasm @ $50. Greed @ $130
New paradigm over the last couple days.
From $160 to $240 down to $140, and up currently to $160
Edit: that low is on bitstamp, mtgox has a low of $126. Still huge swings.
In answer to your question, pricing goods in a fluctuating currency is a well understood problem, and even with a single Google you'd find the Bitcoin community already have established solutions. The short answer: spot price is 99% noise, so don't use it.
Unapologetic for being annoyed at this stuff. Check parent's submission history, top-voted wise cracks have a ripple effect on the remaining comments for a particular submission.
Currency volatility in the real world is generally considered a near-disaster-level problem. So if Bitcoin has truly solved this in a "well established" way I'm sure there are a bunch of national bank managers that would love to hear about it.
I have no doubt a momentary search over on SSRN will produce a hundred papers entirely dedicated to formalizations of this process.
This all speaks to the immense difficultly of real-world adoption of any currency that isn't backed by real government policy.
Lots of people seem to be looking forward to a future of buying physical goods with Bitcoin or bitcoin-alike currencies, which in some ways would be nice but I haven't seen a practical solution to the problem of potentially huge value swings. Nobody wants to sell a real physical good paid for with a stable currency to someone else in a currency that can lose half of its value or more in hours or even days.
the only problem is exchanging bitcoins which is the root of all evil for a non-backed per-trade-valued currency.
That's the short version of the explanation I've read about the "evils" of central banks and debt-based currencies. I'm no expert, so I can't really judge the accuracy of this explanation or whether or not it's evil.
But given the trading activity I'm guessing one of the hoarders had decided to "actualize" their earnings. Or maybe they are raising cash to buy ASIC miners. Who really knows.
If you're middle class you may be worried about a government collapse, ending up as a refugee, hyperinflation, or government seizure.
Bitcoin is a reasonable way to store wealth in those cases.
They talk about it here: https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130404.html
...but as mikebo pointed out that link is from an older incident.
Most BTC exchanges seem to be down right now though.
edit as per comment, thanks!