It's broken 3500 in China, looks like some panic buying happening there.

Overstock will accept bitcoin, not exactly eBay or Amazon, but it's making news in the US.

There's no reason why it's impossible we can keep going up, the trend needs to be broken at some point. A few weeks back lots of people were saying that a major retailer adopting bitcoin was the thing that was needed for higher prices. Now it's happened, but everyone is still reeling from China and expecting impending doom.

Surely if one was liquidating rather than manipulating one would prefer there to be large walls to prevent slippage. Not every price movement is manipulation.

+1

Is it a holiday in China too?

It looks to me like some in China were spooked by the low volume and slow decline in the west on Saturday. Enough was dumped when china woke up to exacerbate this and now it seems the mania is beginning to come to an end, it's been losing steam for a good few days now. We've been lucky so far, two major events (Chinese adoption, US senate approval) synergised to boost confidence, adoption and media coverage. Unless new money enters the market soon I expect the bears will have the upper hand for a while.

Tomorrow is crucial, if there's going to be a major correction I expect it then, but I can't see a 'Great Crash'. The events that prompted this rally are real and game-changing, long term is looking better than ever

Cup. Handle?

I'm bi-polar, I hope he's ok. I'm all for warnings about blatant manipulation, but shouting about people's mental health isn't nice.

Phew, thanks, I was beginning to think I had got something terribly wrong


People may believe that, but they would be wrong. Paying more for the same thing is what happens with inflation.


In the absence of coercion by a state or other entity, confidence plays a major role in the adoption of a currency, and that in turn effects it's market cap and value. Good money drives out bad, that's a lot of what bitcoin is about. Confidence also has an exaggerated effect of the value of a currency when that value is driven primarily by speculation, as is currently the case with crypto-currencies.

I really do agree that belief plays a major role, money is not real, but the market also prices in fundamentals, regardless of what people believe. A lot of people seem to believe bitcoin is a decentralised PayPal, but regardless of that belief it's acting a lot more like virtual gold. If belief was _all_ that mattered then QE would actually work, rather than just being a way of transferring wealth from the economy as a whole into the banks. QE would be causing massive inflation if the new money was actually being circulated in the economy, but instead it's being used to cancel bad debts, being lent back to the government, and to some extent is being hoarded by the wealthy elite. Belief has little to do with it in this case.

It may very well be the case that the benefits of competition outweigh the dangers of diluting the crypto wealth pool, that's why in my original post in this thread I started by saying competition is good. I'm not arguing the relative merits of specific coins, I don't know enough about all the alts to feel I can do that with any authority.

There was a thread a while back where someone was proposing an altcoin that was backed by bitcoin, conceptually it would exist within bitcoin, and contribute towards it's market cap. I think that was a scam, but it was an interesting idea, and it would be a way to have alts without causing the problems I have outlined.

I'm pedantic, I have a pathological need to define things in unreasonable detail. What I have said may have little importance unless crypto goes mainstream in a ridiculously big way

Why? I'm not sure you'd be saying that if there were a quadrillion altcoins each with a market cap equal to BTC, which would be next to valueless in that case. I don't understand what's so hard to understand here. If I'm the one doing the misunderstanding then I would really like someone to explain it to me in a way that makes sense.

If person A has never heard of LTC it doesn't change the fact that person B has, bought a billion dollars worth of LTC instead of BTC, so the market cap of BTC is a billion dollars less than it would otherwise have been, making each bitcoin worth a bit less. Inflation. Person A doesn't need to perceive LTC, only person B does. Of course this example assumes person B would buy BTC if LTC didn't exist, but I think that's likely

If a tree falls in the forest then it is only required that someone hear it in order for it to make a sound, not that everyone hears it.

Not the bitcoin pool, but the crypto-currency pool, yes, that is exactly my point.


No, there is a limitless supply of crypto-coins, the supply of bitcoins remains the same.

I agree completely, money isn't real, it's a tool for allocating goods and services, nothing more.

Let's take a very simple example. Let's say there are only two equal sized countries in the world and they both use the same currency (and only that currency) which has a fixed supply of 1 trillion units. Each of those units represents one trillionth of the total wealth of the world. One day one of the two countries decides that it will create it's own currency, also with a fixed supply of one trillion units. There are now twice the amount of currency units in the world, but the real wealth of the world hasn't doubled. Each currency unit now only represents a two-trillionth of the total wealth of the world, the original currency has been devalued by 50%. How this is perceived by people makes no difference, you can't perceive a new loaf of bread into existence when you only have one (without getting lost in metaphysics at least). Having an exchange to barter the two currencies with each other makes no difference, you have still doubled the total number of currency units, and thereby halved their value.

Of course the situation in the real world is infinitely more complex, and while crypto remains a tiny fraction of the world's money it's easy to imagine that there is the capacity for unlimited growth, but in reality the world is finite, the universe is finite, I think my fundamental point stands. If I'm missing something then I'd love to be enlightened.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not bashing alts or championing bitcoin over other crypto-currencies. I'm not even saying I don't approve of alts, I am very much in favour of freedom and choice. I do believe that inflationary currencies are a bad idea, and having multiple competing crypto-currencies does lead to inflation within crypto. If no one bought LTC then BTC would be worth more. I'm merely identifying a problem, not trying to impose a solution.

I like your nick very much.

I'll have to be brief, I'm in the middle of painting my bedroom, apologies. If you require further explanation I'll post more later or tomorrow....

Most people agree that cryptocurrencies are a new asset class, and bitcoin is the first to become established. While bitcoin is technically inflationary until the last coin is mined, this is offset by the increase in it's adoption/capitalisation. Once the last coin is mined there will be a fixed amount of bitcoins, and bitcoin inflation will stop, no more bitcoins can be created. The growth of altcoins increases the money supply within the crypto asset class, and therefore leads to crypto-inflation. The more the crypto-coins of any kind that are created, the less each individual coin of any kind is worth, it represents a smaller fraction of the total wealth in it's asset class. For me, and for many believers in sound money, the fixed supply of bitcoins is one of the (many) key advantages bitcoin has over the farce that fiat has become. Alt-coins are a threat to this.

You see?

Yes, competition is good.
No, alts are inflationary.

I wouldn't do that either, I convert 100% of my trading stake into bitcoins, otherwise I couldn't sleep

I don't think it's a good idea to combat misconception with confusion.

A finite predefined cap matters, the actual number of units doesn't. Divisibility matters only insofar as the smallest possible amount (Satoshi) is small enough to buy the cheapest thing you are reasonably likely to want to buy.