Bitcoin down 60% to $100(bitstamp.net)
bitstamp.net
Bitcoin down 60% to $100
https://www.bitstamp.net/
93 comments
A daily range of $70-259 shows how over hyped/heated this thing is. Buy low sell high if you're trying to make money. Stay out if you have any common sense at all.
I got the same problem, opened up the Javascript Console, seems to be some error where something is null. Not quite sure how I can sell or buy at the moment unless I try writing something up with their API.
Same problem, can't sell... :( I also tried putting in a buy order, but it didn't go through either.
Looks like a good opportunity for an alternative exchange...
Looks like a good opportunity for an alternative exchange...
I haven't tried it yet, but if I was going to sell BTC for USD I would give this one a go: https://fastcash4bitcoins.com/ They only buy BTC, and it's a fixed price instead of an of exchange.
Why would you not sell then yesterday, at $4k?
Only found them this morning - Sold them for $120 though - so that was a pleasant surprise. Kind of like when you were younger and found $20 in a jacket pocket and it was like you had won the lottery.
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.
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.
Day's Range: $70.00 - $259.34
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.
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.
someone made some serious dough today
and just wait for the SEC to reverse their recent no action decision when the people on the losing end start crying foul.
I'm actually really curious, how could the SEC (or any agency) take any action here? Sure, they can make rules that say you shouldn't trade bitcoins, or maybe even threaten fines ... but for someone who doesn't care to report their activity, is there any way to be "Stopped" from doing so?
By no means am I a securities or legal expert but the SEC has authority to regulate any marketplace, exchange, or "investment opportunity" to ensure investors are protected from fraud.
and that's when, with regulation and control, decentralisation and anonimity vanishes
...in your country, maybe. Bitcoin runs on IP and FinCEN isn't everywhere.
Please, follow the conversation. We are talking about the SEC and users crying foul. Not the impact bitcoin will have today, or tomorrow.
Does it really matter which US-based regulatory body I'm dismissing as irrelevant? The long-term impact of Bitcoin is way bigger than any one country or culture.
Not that I'd wish monetary loss on anyone, but if the first Bitcoin crash is any indication, these things tend to have a positive side-benefit of driving out most of the speculators flooding in after all the news reports that fuel these cycles, and the people actually interested in the currency itself stay behind, with an influx of new folk.
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.
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.
If you wouldn't wish monetary loss on people investo-speculating near-randomly in a very small market for an emerging decentralized cryptocommodity, who WOULD you wish it on?
What is this, "too small to fail"?!
What is this, "too small to fail"?!
I completely agree that this has been the pattern so far. These are great stress-tests for everyone developing software around bitcoin if you ask me.
Bitcoin "down" to $100. They were $10 in January. They'll be over $50 at the end of this month. When I was mining 18 months ago, they were about a quarter.
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.
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.
Unless you actually wanted to transact business using Bitcoin as a unit of account.
Worth observing that the opposite swing, where BTC shoots up $50 in ten minutes or whatever, is just as harmful.
Worth observing that the opposite swing, where BTC shoots up $50 in ten minutes or whatever, is just as harmful.
Most people who aren't risk-tolerant toward things like this are using services that instantly (or daily) convert to USD or EUR to minimize losses due to exchange rate flux.
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.
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.
How do you instantly convert USD and BTC when the prices are this volatile? Bitpay quotes BTC prices good for 10 minutes.
Obviously, you can't. The intra-day prices have only been this volatile for 3 or 4 days out of 1000, though.
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.
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.
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.
And to be clear - what is it that you expect? A long-term per-unit appreciation in "value"?
And to be clear - what is it that you expect? A long-term per-unit appreciation in "value"?
Hope you're right for your own sake...imaginary money is at the end of the day imaginary...doesn't matter if I hold it in paper or if it's set by an algorithm.
http://www.thebubblebubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/st...
First sell-off - late 2011 whne the price dropped from $30 to $5.
Enthusiasm @ $50. Greed @ $130
New paradigm over the last couple days.
First sell-off - late 2011 whne the price dropped from $30 to $5.
Enthusiasm @ $50. Greed @ $130
New paradigm over the last couple days.
We get it. Bitcoins have value and that value changes. Surely there's a better place to discuss this.
I just saw them mention it on CNBC its national news surely hackernews should be discussing the technical aspects of national news, especially when it involves a virtual internet currency.
I don't consider a post that only points to the current value to be a discussion of technical aspects.
Wow, this graph (3 days) is SPECTACULAR http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/USD?span=3d
From $160 to $240 down to $140, and up currently to $160
From $160 to $240 down to $140, and up currently to $160
Fucks sake. I went to cash out a few this morning. The transfer didn't show in my MtGox account for an hour so I went out for the day and come home to this.
bitcoin is done. Why would anyone take this seriously and use it as a store of value when it has had this much volatility in one month without any fundamental reason? The problem with bitcoin is that hardly any businesses support it as a unit of payment, without having to convert to a real currency. So as a result, bitcoin does not have any fundamental value. It's purely for speculation and fun.
Day low of $70 but now $180. Huge potential profits for some.
Edit: that low is on bitstamp, mtgox has a low of $126. Still huge swings.
Edit: that low is on bitstamp, mtgox has a low of $126. Still huge swings.
And huge potential losses for others. Remember this is a zero sum game (outside the miners), money gained by one person is lost by another.
This thing where people frame the currency as a commodity to invest in for huge profit seems like it is driving instability that makes the currency less useful as a currency.
Can someone tell me how to put a filter on my Hacker News account to remove the multiple-times-a-day articles about Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the opposite of a useful thing for my business, where I need actual revenue in dollars so I can turn around and pay my expenses in dollars.
This is a community with a variety of interests and needs that shares articles that may or may not line up with your interests and needs 100% of the time. That's the price of going to a collectively aggregated news and discussion site, you have to see stories that may not be specifically relevant to you.
Yes, and that's why I continue to happily read Hacker News. You missed my point that I believe it's excessive to have a "news story" every time Bitcoin fluctuates. I would love to know how many Y Combinator or other startup companies are transacting in BTC -- my guess is under 1%.
Tell me again why any sane person would accept bitcoin as a currency for goods?
It's a young experiment, it'll take time to see what happens with it. Although according to WordPress, their primary motivation for accepting it as payment is to facilitate certain international transactions. (There are a few existing fiat currencies that make BTC look rock-solid by comparison.)
I don't really have any issue with services like WordPress (whose per-user support costs are likely negligible for most users) accepting Bitcoin. In those cases the PR is probably worth it regardless of the the price swings. My issue is more with physical goods.
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.
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 reason would be that any other currency has a higher personal risk of using.
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.
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 selling something illegal, for instance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)
Please quit with the superficial throwaway comments, that's two content-free crowd-pleasers in under 15 minutes.
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.
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.
I just did several googles, and can't find an answer to that question. Maybe you could enlighten us on the "well established solutions" (or just some google search terms to pull them up)? It seems like a serious question to me.
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.
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.
There is at least one web service that produces an average over some period. As to how you pick a good weighting, it probably depends a lot on how fast you intend to flip outgoing goods/incoming currency, or where you store value. Try terms like "VWAP", "Bitcoin average price" and so on.
I have no doubt a momentary search over on SSRN will produce a hundred papers entirely dedicated to formalizations of this process.
I have no doubt a momentary search over on SSRN will produce a hundred papers entirely dedicated to formalizations of this process.
Once you formalize the process, how do you get people to buy into it? This seems like a typical techie thing of coming up with a mathematical solution to an issue that is really more about human psychology. When you have admittedly linkbaity websites screaming "Bitcoint has lost half of its value" all over the place, good luck explaining to people that we should really be averaging the value and everything is fine, and keep selling your goods at the current average price, etc.
This all speaks to the immense difficultly of real-world adoption of any currency that isn't backed by real government policy.
This all speaks to the immense difficultly of real-world adoption of any currency that isn't backed by real government policy.
What should you google to find out about how people with goods/services are handling instability in currency value? Even if a vendor updated pricing indexed to the dollar regularly (which is not desirable at all) it's seems like it would still be hard to manage keeping any cash reserves of a currency that is not a stable store of value. I'd be interested to read about what vendors are doing to deal with this.
The problem is the prices of physical goods through bitcoin-accepting vendors are pinned to USD prices, albeit by proxy through bitcoin. Automatically adjusting the price of items, even using an average, doesn't change the fact both you and the vendor run a high risk of taking a potentially huge opportunity cost.
If enough people did... the exchange rate would not matter very much ;-)
Because it offers the opportunity to trade without the shadow market of banks and financial regulators which get pennys of every damn good you buy without doing something important.
the only problem is exchanging bitcoins which is the root of all evil for a non-backed per-trade-valued currency.
the only problem is exchanging bitcoins which is the root of all evil for a non-backed per-trade-valued currency.
I can go right to my online bank and have them send a payment to anyone in the country, at zero charge.
The charge is hidden. The US dollar, and every other national-bank-backed currency, is debt-based. For every dollar that's put into the economy by the national bank, a bit more than a dollar is owed to the bank. That makes it impossible to pay back the debt without inflating the currency, which reduces the value of the dollar (what it can buy) to less than the original dollar+debt amount.
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.
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.
Some countries forbid private currency exchanges (ie Venezuela) or face international sanctions (ie Iran).
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.
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.
Note that the price may not be live, but instead a CloudFlare cached version. The price may be incorrect.
If I wanted to sell my bitcoins right this minute do you think I could get a higher price? I don't. And that's the only measure of price that matters.
What I meant by that is the page will sometimes call a cached version from earlier today, which would be more inaccurate. I had the page load a cached version that had it at $225, and after retrying for a live version, it had it down to $160.
You don't think it's important to have accurate price history to sell something?
This site seems to have a fairly decent up to date measurement in realtime. It lacks the graphing ability to see the dramatic drop off trend though:
http://realtimebitcoin.info/
http://realtimebitcoin.info/
Their data is just pulled from mtgox and blockchain.info, both of which have been fairly unreliable today (mtgox more so). It does have a nice way of presenting the information though.
What are you talking about? $150 ≠ $100
When you have no order book depth, the price might as well be random.
The price is flailing wildly due to the DDOS against Mt Gox.
They talk about it here: https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130404.html
...but as mikebo pointed out that link is from an older incident.
They talk about it here: https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130404.html
...but as mikebo pointed out that link is from an older incident.
That press release is from 6 days ago
There is a significant change at this time (it was at $80 20 minutes ago)
Where do you get those valuations? Every site I know of is down.
From intermittent access to the live version of bitstamp, sorry but I don't have any screenshot nor high res graph of this exchange. And bitcoinity has lot of lag.
Quite a few of the transactions on bitcoinity are actually cached mtgox pages pulled from cloudflare, which accounts for the fake $180 fluctuations.
The price changed.
What are the best sources for viewing a chart of intra-day price movements?
https://data.mtgox.com/api/0/png/24hours.png?Currency=EUR / https://data.mtgox.com/api/0/png/24hours.png?Currency=USD
edit as per comment, thanks!
edit as per comment, thanks!
Note well that the BTC/EUR and BTC/USD markets on MtGox are _different markets_. The (liquid) one that you care about is the BTC/USD market. The EUR-traded one is much smaller.
It says on their site: Bitcoinity is currently completely behind. New machine is coming slowly. Sorry folks
Currently none, we should wait for the lag of Mt.Gox to decrease
mtgox.com and mtgoxlive.com were both pretty good.
Most BTC exchanges seem to be down right now though.
Most BTC exchanges seem to be down right now though.
Yeah, NO ONE saw this coming :)
Of course DDOS attacks, split market places and a gains of 100% per week for a few months are going to require hard falls.
Just wait 20 minutes.
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This is simply a panic when someone decides to sell low. The average weight is the right no. to look at.
People buying at 180$/btc when the price is at 130? Nothing suspicious here, move along.
Buy gold and silver instead.
Simple cash-in on profits
Now at $150?
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...