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Comment by Avalaxy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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/

"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.

>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.

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.

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.

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)

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