The Bubbly Bitcoin Thread -- Merged Threads

[anonguest]

Given the dozens of pages this thread has accumulated so far apologies IF this has already been addressed......

Trying to take the nature of the thread back to intellectual discussion of Bitcoin, rather than just endless comments re: latest price.....

Anyone want to offer an opinion/thoughts as to how cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will fare in a high(er) interest rate world?

Yeah yeah I know I know there will never be any rate rises cos all the CB's are inflating away, there is too much debt to allow it to happen, etc etc.

BUT.....when (as I believe one day it will come about) what would likely be the impact on Bitcoin?

Edited November 26, 2013 by anonguest

[The Masked Tulip]

Given the dozens of pages this thread has accumulated so far apologies IF this has already been addressed......

Trying to take the nature of the thread back to intellectual discussion of Bitcoin, rather than just endless comments re: latest price.....

Anyone want to offer an opinion/thoughts as to how cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will fare in a high(er) interest rate world?

Yeah yeah I know I know there will never be any rate rises cos all the CB's are inflating away, there is too much debt to allow it to happen, etc etc.

BUT.....when (as I believe one day it will come about) what would likely be the impact on Bitcoin?

Isn't that moot? I mean, people are doubling their cash in 7 days so why worry about IR rises X years in the future?

I am not opposed to bitcoin folks but surely this is a bubble worthy of the name. Be careful.

[The Masked Tulip]

[righttoleech]

When Filth and Krusty start promoting them count me in.

[NatterJackToad]

Bloody hell have just seen the Litecoin (LTC) price jump!! They are now $17 each or 0.02 BTC. This is fast catching back up to it's 0.035BTC high in May.

Namecoin has also come out of nowhere to race into 3rd ($6.4).

How do I start mining these other Crypto's?

What kit do I need?

Sounds like a decent investment.

[zugzwang]

A more interesting parallel might be with the price of oil in 2007/8, prior to the Crash. That spike was created by the likes of Goldmans and JP Morgan running off the original housing bubble by discreetly trading against AIG's CDS exposure. Where's the cash coming from with Bitcoin?

China, perhaps.

[markyh]

Namecoin has also come out of nowhere to race into 3rd ($6.4).

How do I start mining these other Crypto's?

What kit do I need?

Sounds like a decent investment.

No one mines Namecoin directly, it uses the same sha256 as bitcoin and is worth 0nly 2.3% of BTC. However many BTC mining pools "mergemine" it along with BTC as a bonus as it uses the exact same mining process as BTC so takes no extra effort to extract. I have minning 2 NMC this week just as abyproduct of BTC mining.

Litecoin mining (Scrypt) is very different to BTC mining and is still done on GPU's. Try this first ;

http://www.cryptobadger.com/build-your-own-litecoin-mining-rig/

Beware, it's hot and noisy and will add £20+ a month to your leccy bill! You really need a spare room, man cave, or garage / celler with power. I use my man cave and leave the door open slightly to let the heat warm up the first and second fllors of the house with makes the CH cut in less saving a bit of gas!!

M

[evetsm]

This is what a chart can look like

for a disruptive technology. The

chart goes vertical from close to

zero adoption until 60% adoption

in 6 years. And then it just keeps

going.

http://*******.com/nev9mfu

Edited November 27, 2013 by evetsm

[Bloo Loo]

just thinking out loud here.

first, exponential growth itself will be disruptive...for whatever economy, product, service you are measuring...thats a fact.

second, there are relatively few BTC being traded on these exchanges.

Now, if Id just bought a few hundred, and I wanted to cash in, id be buying a very small amount bidding up the price say every 5 minutes...add a lot of dollars to the headline price on the exchanges and then...sell sell sell.

[The Masked Tulip]

I just read an article which claimed that this run up in bitcoin is being driven by Chinese using it to get money out of China. Apparently there is a 20% mark up on using Chinese bitcoin exchanges.

[The Masked Tulip]

just thinking out loud here.

first, exponential growth itself will be disruptive...for whatever economy, product, service you are measuring...thats a fact.

second, there are relatively few BTC being traded on these exchanges.

Now, if Id just bought a few hundred, and I wanted to cash in, id be buying a very small amount bidding up the price say every 5 minutes...add a lot of dollars to the headline price on the exchanges and then...sell sell sell.

It is looking somewhere between a bubble and a ponzi scam IMPO. I can't help think that within a few weeks people will be saying "1,000 bucks! What were we thinking?".

[evetsm]

I just read an article which claimed that this run up in bitcoin is being driven by Chinese using it to get money out of China. Apparently there is a 20% mark up on using Chinese bitcoin exchanges.

This is potentially going to be used by people moving money anywhere. 10s of millions of migrant workers all over the world are paying Western Union and banks extortionate fees with reams of provisos to transfer money back to their home.

[Traktion]

I just read an article which claimed that this run up in bitcoin is being driven by Chinese using it to get money out of China. Apparently there is a 20% mark up on using Chinese bitcoin exchanges.

As they don't float their currency and have tight controls on it, I suspect this could be true. I think China sees the potential to trade outside of the USD too, which they already have too much of!

[Traktion]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

[SpectrumFX]

On that analysis there's still a little bit of uptrend left before the SHTF : )

I bought £100 worth last week, if it doubles I'll take my stake back and sit back and enjoy the ride. If it crashes I'll write off the £100 and go back to losing my spare cash on gold miner shares : )

The trick with this sort of thing is to only gamble what you can easily afford to lose.

[R K]

On that analysis there's still a little bit of uptrend left before the SHTF : )

I bought £100 worth last week, if it doubles I'll take my stake back and sit back and enjoy the ride. If it crashes I'll write off the £100 and go back to losing my spare cash on gold miner shares : )

The trick with this sort of thing is to only gamble what you can easily afford to lose.

say 10% upside versus 90% downside.

Poor bet/trade.

As you say for £100 it's irrelevant either way. For a supposed currency it's insane.

Unless this time it's different, which it never is.

[GeordieAndy]

Looks like the forum is back up whilst BTC has hit $1224.60 today

Maybe the mods switched the HPC server to mining mode today hence the down time

[happy_renting]

well if you'd had the luck of timing the bottom of the last pump in dump (US gov. meetings), you'd be $250 up now if you'd bought 1 BTC.. $2500 if you'd bought 10. not bad for a couple of days.

slow and steady to $1000 before xmas now? or more volatility?

surely upwards as more money trickles in after the US meetings which were viewed as positive?

For sure my $500/BTC by the end of the month is looking more certain as each day passes! As we have already reached $1000 once this week shows that the market is willing to consider it, so it could easily creep up there again by years end.

M

I's been above $1150 for most of the afternoon, and the month isn't even over for a couple of days more.

And you made those wildly optimistic predictions only 7 days ago...

I predict that there will be a large correction downwards to $300-ish in the next couple of weeks, a bounce, and then the price will slowly fall for a few months, perhaps to $500 before the next mad phase.

Totally unscientific, I just checked my tea-leaves.

Edit: I also predict that Max Keiser jizzed his pants this afternoon.

Edited November 28, 2013 by happy_renting

[long time lurking]

I's been above $1150 for most of the afternoon, and the month isn't even over for a couple of days more.

And you made those wildly optimistic predictions only 7 days ago...

I predict that there will be a large correction downwards to $300-ish in the next couple of weeks, a bounce, and then the price will slowly fall for a few months, perhaps to $500 before the next mad phase.

Totally unscientific, I just checked my tea-leaves.

Edit: I also predict that Max Keiser jizzed his pants this afternoon.

My link

[NatterJackToad]

I's been above $1150 for most of the afternoon, and the month isn't even over for a couple of days more.

And you made those wildly optimistic predictions only 7 days ago...

i have no idea what's going to happen in the next few months.

it does seem to have shot up quickly and therefore a big sell off could occur.

however, each time it has, it has raced back to its all time high within a very short period of time.

the way it breezed past $1,100 was quite something as previously it always stalled for a long while at big milestones.

maybe the next big milestone will be $2,000.

remember, a $10bn market cap is peanuts in the grand scheme of things...

[Rave]

I could have doubled whatever money I put in when they dropped back to $500 a few days ago. If that had been my entire bank balance I'd have enough to buy a house for cash now!

As it is I just sat on the 3.7 btc I mined in 2011. I'm enjoying the ride anyway, since the cost of entry was so tiny! The leccy to mine them can't have been more than a tenner.

I would say that, though this does indeed look like a classic bubble, it's got a long way to go before it becomes a mania. When I hear people talking about bitcoins on the bus I'll give it a week and take some profit!

I mentioned it years ago on here, but this is a fine book about financial insanity:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crashes-They-Happen-Survive-Them/dp/0283996730

...found my copy in a charity shop bin many years ago.

[Eddie_George]

i have no idea what's going to happen in the next few months.

it does seem to have shot up quickly and therefore a big sell off could occur.

however, each time it has, it has raced back to its all time high within a very short period of time.

the way it breezed past $1,100 was quite something as previously it always stalled for a long while at big milestones.

maybe the next big milestone will be $2,000.

remember, a $10bn market cap is peanuts in the grand scheme of things...

There is a lot of money around earning very little in the bank, plus it's probably feeding of the tech boom (bubble) that's forming once again. It could crash in concert with that.

[justthisbloke]

I mentioned it years ago on here, but this is a fine book about financial insanity:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crashes-They-Happen-Survive-Them/dp/0283996730

...found my copy in a charity shop bin many years ago.

Found it at Amazon:

1 new from £1,563.31

I think I'd rather invest it in btc and risk the crash.

Or buy the 2nd hand Amazon offer at £0.01. Amazon vendors' pricing heuristics can be quite odd sometimes.

[miggy]

There is a lot of money around earning very little in the bank, plus it's probably feeding of the tech boom (bubble) that's forming once again. It could crash in concert with that.

My mum said he had given up on her non-performing ISA so is moving to Bitcoin. She knows the risks and is only going in with a small amount.

However, the sentiment is interesting.

[happy_renting]

My link

Yeah, I read that story.

Not only did he throw away a HDD with 75k of bitcoins, it is also clear that:

• he disposed of a HDD without erasing what was on it, or even checking what was on it;

• he disposed of an HDD without destroying it;

• he works in IT, and goes to the press advertising what a prat he is and how careless he is WRT data security.

What a bell-end.

Edited November 28, 2013 by happy_renting