Bitcoin Markets React to US Marshal Auction Close | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin Markets React to US Marshal Auction Close

buttercoinmarketupdate.posthaven.com

50 pointscedricdahl14 comments

"A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers." "Let's use them to build narratives!" --http://xkcd.com/904/

The next step, obviously, is a Markov chain sentence generator based on this. Hell, I'd like to see a completely AI-generated news site that works off scraping current events and a market report.

Secondmarket who were touted as one of the biggest potential bidders who also ran a bidding syndicate just announced they were outbid on all blocks: https://twitter.com/barrysilbert/status/483692873855299584

Very bullish news. Still waiting for someone to announce the prices they bid at though.

How is a 2.4% price jump in a market as volatile and illiquid as bitcoin indicative of anything?

Since the post was published three days ago, bitcoin is up about 12%.

But bitcoin can just as easily lose 10% in a day without surprising anyone. So, that's still not exactly bullish.

Note that this assumes the markets believe all bitcoins are fungible. There was some speculation buyers might pay a premium for coins held by the US government because they would be considered "clean".

That said, if you don't believe Bitcoins to be fungible I think you'd be crazy to buy millions of dollars worth of them. Bitcoin becomes far less useful if everyone has to worry whether their Bitcoins won't be accepted by certain users.

I always thought these Bitcoins might command a premium due to no counterparty risk and no need to give personal information to sketchy companies. Although from what I understand many bitcoin enthusiasts don't necessarily thrust the US government either...

More likely in my opinion: They might command a premium because buying them like this would be a lot less expensive than buying the same quantity on the open markets, where you would likely drive the price way up before you finished purchasing your target quantity.

Keep in mind, that this is pure speculation. There is no evidence whatsoever that whoever bought bitcoins below a certain price is in any way connected to the bidders, or even that those bitcoins were bought by a single individual.

Is the timestamp on this post incorrect? "Posted 3 days ago. June 27, 2014 at 7:44 PM"

The chart in the blog post is also from june 27-28, so it looks like you're right.

Today's jump may have more to do with this news from IRS:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/06/30/irs-...

No. This IRS news was known more than 3 weeks ago: http://www.bna.com/irs-no-bitcoin-n17179891056/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com