Bitcoin Forum

I see massive sales in Bitstamp and other exchange and my question is simply. Who is so stupid to sell so many bitcoins in that prices?? I cant understand this.

What is so hard to understand? Bitcoin currently spends $500 million per year on PoW mining, so without inflow of new capital, the price of Bitcoin will perpetually decline, due to value being sucked out of the eco-system by PoW miners.

Not only this, but the question isn't why sell, but why would you hold? If you're about to lose 33% of your money it's better to sell. Unfortunately it hurts everyone but when it comes to money who cares about everyone else.

But when you sell when the prices in a day is about 50% that is a fool action especially in bitcoin ecosystem with that volatility when you know that everything can change in days or in a hour.
Is fool action to sell low and buy high

Miners didn't buy high, they have invested in the hardware already, they will sell at ANY price in hope for ROI. Also electricity bill has to be paid, miners aren't going to pay these with additional funds out of pocket.

But you know that you don't have a roi in that prices. So why they don't just unplug the machines? Is better to keep selling until all their ecosystem to collapse? In my opinion this is still a stupid action.

If all of us smartly don't sell Bitcoin, then this price will never recover.

Why would they unplug the machine if they could still extract value out of the Bitcoin eco-system? As long as they could earn more than electricity cost, they will mine and sell in hope for ROI. They will only unplug if electricity cost > mining income.

The price will go low enough to shake the speculators out like in every other market. If you can't handle double digits, then you're a speculator.

I  think they can't  earn money in that prices especially the middle power miners

I've kind of been expecting this (not hoping for, but expecting). Miners without deep pockets need to keep selling their BTC to pay for electricity and other expenses. The lower BTC goes, the more they have to sell, creating a vicious circle until they've sold all their BTC and have been run out of business. So expect continuing downward pressure until you see the total network hashrate start dropping and word of major mining concerns dropping out. (The hashrate drop may likely be temporary as equipment is then leased/sold to others, but the point is, the upward trend in hashrate is going to get real choppy for a while).

Once there is enough blood in the streets, things will start to recover. Or a black swan event like Cyprus could hit any time and send people scurrying for BTC. I admit I'm looking forward to buying, but will wait a bit for a bottom. Until then, HODL.....

there are many stupid people I guess they are trying to cover losses...I dont know how though

Electricitiy costs are not every where equal, so they will sell it and another one will plug it on again. That cause fluctuation. A miner has to make money for storage place, ventilation so electricity costs back is for the most to less. And one day the pcb are dying too and then its definitly over. All that means some will unplug their hardware.

I am sure those people are hackers. No one would be so stupid to buy at $700 USD and sell at $350. They go tthem for free.

Great strategy... buy high sell low :P. Best wishes to all that morons. Now we can have many bitcoins in our wallets. Thank you all!  ;D

easy answer ... people who bought at $2

I have an advice to keep selling. We need more  ;D

If it were not PoW it would be "Bitcoin currently spends $500 million per year on <insert other security mechanism here>"

If it did not cost a lot, anyone could pay cheap prices to either destroy Bitcoin or get all of the bitcoins.

The mining system self regulates. If mining becomes unprofitable they switch off and difficulty falls. Who cares what miners spend? Perpetual decline, lol.

Proof of Stake systems are proven to be more secure, and cost a lot less (nearly nothing).

Miner's spending is eventually reflected in Bitcoin price, as they sell their earned Bitcoin at any opportunity, to cover their expense and hope for ROI. Yes some will unplug if price is low enough, but then Bitcoin stakeholders are hurting too, since the value of their Bitcoin has fallen.

No one is stupid. But if you someone has more than 10K $ invested into bitcoins, then it is not easy to see a 10% decrease in the value per day. A lot of big holders would have lost half of their investments. But it is true, that this also decreases the price further.

proof of stake means Mark Karpeles becomes in charge of mining, nope, no problem there...

Then write a rebuttal of my points laid out in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=809588.msg9078791#msg9078791

I really do hope you could change my opinion, since right now I could see nothing PoW have that could match the advantage of PoS.

This is as stupid as the people who sold at $600. ("we will never see sub 600 again").

I don't see a problem with that, if his customers didn't have a problem. Apparently, that's not the case though. A lot of PoS altcoin exchanges do mine with their stake, and pay their customer a interest, while securing the network, there's nothing wrong with that.

and when the exchange operator steals all their money and runs away with it then what?
not only does he have their money he can also 50% attack the network all he wants.

How is that a problem with PoS or PoW at all? exchange operator can steal money with both PoW or PoS network.

The difference is he needs to steal 51% of the stake to attack a PoS network, but he just need about 10% to buy enough hardware to attack a PoW network. Though I don't think he has any incentive to attack either.

Another difference is a PoS eco-system can form a consensus and block out the attacker's stake, making them useless/worthless, this is a big deterrent to potential attackers. A PoW system can't block out attacker's hardware, since there's no way to distinguish hardware.

he can't just buy 50% of the hash power in hardware, the hardware does not get produced that fast.
plus it exposes his physical location making it much more likely the police will come asking questions.

with PoS he can just sit at home and anonymously double spend.
you never know what people's incentives are, some people just want to watch the world burn.
https://sslimgs.xkcd.com/comics/a-minus-minus.png

Just bought 2 BTC @ 300.70 ... I think it will be okay 5 years from now

Hardware does not need to be produced at all, he could just go ahead and buy some big existing mining farm, with a premium price offer. All of them will gladly sell, because PoW miners are profit chasers, they don't care about the eco-system, they have no stake in any eco-system since it's not required to mine, they only care about extracting value out of the eco-system.

buying a single mining farm isn't enough to get 50% you would need to buy a whole bunch of mining farms.
you do not simply go and buy a big mining farm with your stolen money, something like that will get lots of headline news on coindesk and the guy will be in jail the next day.
no one cares about the eco-system, everyone only care about profit, doesn't matter if its PoW or PoS.

It won't make news if the deal is done in private, so on the surface ownership of the mega farms is unchanged.

Sure everyone cares for profits, but there's a difference, PoW miners aren't stake holders in the eco-system, it's not required. PoS miners are naturally also stake holders of the eco-system, it's the definition of PoS, if they want to mine a PoS system, then they must be stakeholders of the system. If they are stakeholders, then they have to naturally care about the eco-system, otherwise it's their own money to lose.

PoW is a business, if the ecosystem doesn't succeed their business is worthless and their capital investment is lost.
PoW miners have just as much in stake as PoS miners, except in PoS you can also have a bunch of thieves who stole the money and couldn't care less .

If you bought it at $1, you have no reason not to sell now.

ROI in USD is plain retarded. Only moron miners do that. The rest wants to ROI in BTC.
But with 99.9% of the ASIC Miners that is not possible. And BTC ROI is only indirectly price dependant (higher price, faster difficulty increase, because of new mining boons).

A fact is that most miners will lose money in the end. The actual system only works for early adopters, good traders and mining equipment sellers like butterfly labs and others  ;)



Then you have all the reason to sell a small part (till 50%). Lock in some profits. It is 4 times worse than at the ATH, but still 300x UP!

PoW is not tied to any one eco-system, the miners will mine the most profitable eco-system, they have no reason to care about whether any eco-system survives, as long as there's at least one eco-system for them to mine at. This phenomenal was very clearly demonstrated with scrypt mining, the biggest pools were the ones with instant switch capability, to mine the most profitable eco-system. The PoW miners could not care less if any specific eco-system survived. All they care about is how to extract value out of the most profitable eco-system, in the most efficient manner. Their "stake" is tied to their hardware investment, not to any crypto eco-system. Their only interest is to extract enough value out of any crypto eco-system, to pay for their hardware, electricity, and profit.

Not sure about 5 years from now, but for sure will be higher in the road till there at some point.