Bitcoin Price Slumps Again | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin Price Slumps Again

coinde.sk

49 pointsdcawrey51 comments

As long as bitcoin is seeing these huge crashes for no real reason, it's not a mature investment vehicle. There's absolutely no valid reason to sell right now, this crash is just driven by panicking people. I think this is mostly because too much wealth is in the hands of too few people, and people who never really traded before (techies, mainstream people, novice traders, etc.) now invested in bitcoin, and try their hands on trading.

I hope all this panic selling will lead to a better distribution of the bitcoins, so that it may become a more stable investment vehicle. These random huge crashes aren't doing bitcoin much good. People want stability if they are to accept this as a currency.

Aren't those all arguments in favor of liquidating any position in BTC?

Yes, unless you're in for a long term hedge. It's reasonable to hold a small amount long term, in case over the years it proves successful. It's not reasonable to put half your savings in because 'omg it's gonna double over next month!'

Yea, they may be. But not now. The trader's goal is to buy low, and sell high. Selling low makes no sense.

a trader needs to cut his losses. Selling low makes more sense than losing all.

Agree with the cutting losses, but we see these patterns all the time with bitcoin. Big chance it will be up to old levels in 4 days. The long-term sentiment for bitcoin is very bullish (or at least that's my opinion). Cutting losses is not a very logical strategy for long positions in bitcoin imho.

The problem is that at some point any rational trader will want to cash out at least some profits. This swings are showing how little it takes to tank the price. The less liquidity there is, the more academic the trading price is.

There's a system for making sure you buy low and sell high ("rebalancing"). Step zero is not to run off and make trades based on news you just heard; that's a sure way to buy high and sell low.

"There's absolutely no valid reason to sell right now"

China. Bitcoin will have slower growth than expected. Very good reason for a pullback after a massive spike up.

Especially when a wide spread service like coinbase keeps crashing at peak times and locking people out of their accounts because it counts failed log in attempts as legitimate attempts.

Forget mature. It's not an investment vehicle, period. No currency is an investment vehicle. No currency can be an investment vehicle.

Now, if you want to speculate on how currency values might fluctuate relative to each other, then you've got something. Bitcoin's an absolutely fantastic currency for speculation.

Exactly. Some more argumentation at http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/bitcoin-medium-of-exchange/

>for no real reason

I won't give anyone investment advice, but the recent drop does have a real reason behind it. The Chinese government released a notice[1] tightening regulation on bitcoin activity within the country. There is of course debate about the implications of this, but the market has spoken and the price has fallen, so here we are. It's no different than a company's press release affecting that company's stock price.

[1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1s5hzl/my_human_tra...

>As long as bitcoin is seeing these huge crashes for no real reason, it's not a mature investment vehicle.

It's not supposed to be.

It's the complete opposite.

Once Bitcoin has stabilized/has become mature it's not an investment vehicle anymore, it's a currency.

For as long as it is very volatile, it's an investment vehicle. You don't want something to be mature when you invest in it, you want to be in very early on, because that's the only time where you make a significant profit.(10x-100x)

I just watched it go down from 750$ to 710$ in something like 5 minutes.

I know that it fluctuates like that other times too but this is extraordinary to watch.

http://bitcointicker.co

PS: I got my first bitcoins 3 days ago. So, if you want something else to crash to ground, just let me touch it.

Oh, you must be one of the first people who tried to access healthcare.gov then :-) that explains it

I bought my first 0.1 bitcoin last night when BTC was at ~$986 so not a warm welcome. Thankfully, it's only 0.1. Definitely won't be selling any time soon.

I'm not touching bitcoins because I don't want to destroy anyone's retirement.

Same here. From my experience in regular stock trading on etrade, I've come to expect anything I invest in to crash to the ground 1 minute later so I bought a minimal amount of BTC to test the waters. Sure enough, crash. I totally went into this with the plan of first buying 1kUSD of bitcoin; crash a week later then buy $4k. Just waiting to see if it'll crash below $500.

Don't feel too bad, you're not alone. I got burned in the first big crash last spring: http://peterdowns.com/posts/my-adventure-with-bitcoin.html

For what it's worth:

Bitcoin Valued At $1300 By Bank of America Analysts

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/12/05/bank-of-a...

There isn't a crash in bitcoin price, there is a market sale going on just in time for the holiday. Entry points in down markets is smarter than entry points at the peak of they hype. This happens on the stock market everyday. When buying, red is green.

In the end, crashes filter out the most speculative and eventually the shorts (in other markets -- the only way to short bitcoin is selling so it will be more volatile during these machinations, it will need shorting soon as it does help keep a solid bottom), there is apparently lots of speculation padded in the recent bitcoin price.

With market activity like this, it seems humorous to hear stories of employees' [0] salaries being paid in BTC.

[0] - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57614544-93/kentucky-police...

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the Chinese Central Bank action (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6853305) prevented Chinese citizens from converting RMB into BTC directly from their bank accounts? Might be behind some of this (from what I understand, BTC was one of the only ways mainland Chinese citizens could /legally/ convert RMB into other currencies above the daily limit).

The interesting thing is you can still use bitcoin to convert RMB to USD regardless of bank policy, by investing in mining. If you can pay for the costs of mining (hardware + electricity) in RMB, you can then sell the coins you mine for USD, completely bypassing capital controls. Even if you are mining at a slight loss, it might still be worth it to someone really keen on turning more RMB into USD then otherwise allowed.

The tiny division of Baidu which "quit" accepting Bitcoin (and was the only part of Baidu which ever accepted BTC) was tiny. Think 1/10,000th of Baidu.

Bitcoin is crashing hard right now. Down to $730 on Mt. Gox, the lowest since November 21.

Dropped from $800 to ~$700 in the last 15 minutes:

http://bitcointicker.co/

Yup, just went down $30 in under 3 minutes. It's in free-fall.

This is when you are thankful for slower transaction times than the stock market.

Yawn. Of course it did. Listen folks, China was driving value. The upticks now are the clueless looking to make some money. If you believe in it, by all means. If you're looking to buy for profit, please don't. I stand by my prediction of sub 100 soon...

The Difference per "exchange" are interesting. A buy at https://www.coinmama.com/ is still over $1050

A buy at https://www.mtgox.com/ is $750

That's not quite but really close to 50% more than MtGox.

This ought to be a giant warning sign.

Illiquidity of that magnitude should suggest that you stay the fuck away, that there's no real market in bitcoins and therefore that the risk is probably much greater than you perceive.

But, hey, this just means that I'm envious of all your internet riches, or something like that, so feel free to disregard.

Actually, I only just bought A coin. And mostly because it will be more fun to watch with skin in the game.

Wow I lucked out. I bought about $70 in Bitcoin earlier this year. Cashed out on Monday fir $800, I needed the money for some car repairs. Looks like I might be able to repair my car and spend the leftover to get just as much BTC as I had last week.

And all from the comfort of your own home in your spare time!

Couldn't this just all be someone dumping a huge amount of their Bitcoins to convert it to real $?

Same thing can happen when someone who owns a lot of stock in a company lets go of a huge amount of stocks in a company all at once..

I was wondering when Satoshi Nakamoto would decide to cash out.

If one (or several) big account(s) was making a huge trade like that, though, it would be visible on the block chain.

This is crazy fun to watch. I just bought 4 bitcoins at $685 from Coinbase and it's already up to $777 just 10 minutes later. I think I hit the right time to buy, now I wait for it to go to $2000.

I think it's going to be pretty wild for the next few days/weeks because of the China news. I would sell at $777 and wait for the ride to be over before I bought in again. I got out earlier today at $900 anticipating the China news to sink in later today. Sure enough when China wakes up it crashes.

I'm going to wait until it stabilizes around a price before I buy again.

The good news: China can't ban BitCoin as a currency again, and the US looks like it isn't going to.

China woke up and itsnot crashing that much more.

Look at a chart of the last 30 hours. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions minute to minute here, it's anybody's guess where things will be in a few days (I suppose as is per usual with bitcoin).

Like I said, I'm waiting for it to go to $2000 before I sell but maybe $1300 for a quick profit.

Merrill Lynch appraised it at $1300: http://www.ibtimes.com/bitcoin-worth-1300-merrill-lynchs-cas...

I agree with you about no government being able to ban bitcoin. It's unstoppable.

Just gained 100 dollars in a minute.

Lost about $8000... made it back within not long. ughhh my stomach

Lost, as in you've invested N+8000 USD, and were down to N, or as in lost out on the opportunity to cash out?

Under $660 now.

Over $800 now. I guess someone with a large wallet just dumped everything carelessly.

Went from 780 to 650 and back to 890 in 50 minutes.

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