CRASH?! (not) For all the 'nay sayers'

[Jobe7]

As I said in another thread, £200 by the end of this week. But recently I learned some new things, and can fairly say if this pace continues then on Thursday/Friday we should see some very interesting things with price/spike increase.

I was already wrong about today though, was saying to a friend £120 at least.. and i wake up and it's already £124 .. and climbing.

So, ye, the evolutionary cross over is probably more likely Thursday than Friday.

[Razick]

Bitcoin itself is not a bubble, however, I do think the price is in for a correction.

You mean the one we had like a week ago? 

Time for another rally. Looks like it's started....

That was short term uncertainty. I mean a large correction to at least around $90.

[W-M]

This is insane. I bought a few bitcoins two weeks ago and they have now doubled in value.

Bubble or not, this extreme quick rise in price doesn't look sustainable to me.

[jrlichtman]

At least part of this is driven by market uncertainty. There's somewhat of a negative correlation between global stock markets and BTC's price at the moment.

[Operatr]

A Bitcoin bubble is the least of the problems to come, which could elevate Bitcoin to the top in a hurry.

Go look at http://www.thebubblebubble.com/ (one of the same that predicted with accuracy the 2008 disaster), the world's economy is at the brink of a complete and total meltdown, in what could very well be the Great World Depression of 2015 (or so) where China finally melts and takes the commodities market with it that it has only sustained by faking it economically, rife with corruption and no plan to fix it. The US will soon be bankrupted by out of control medical expense, and most top nations including the US in the world can look forward to a massive housing bust at the same time.

The US is also poised to see its out of control college system burn down as a result of a complete default on over $1 Trillion in rising student debt, making it pretty much impossible for anyone of lower class to go to school after that. Add to the massive layoffs and budget cuts of the medical system once pops, they will be joined in the unemployment line with college professors and support staff. Way to many glut industries exist where trained workers outsupply the demand for them.  The unemployment rise world wide will be detrimental.

 I am convinced it is only a matter of time before the entire world suffers and starts looking for a fast way out, and there is no hope to save our current financial model. How can we with the same idiots in charge when the last bubble burst. These new ones make the 2008 Housing Crash look like a trip to Space Mountain in comparison.

The 2008 Recession was only a taster of whats to come as the US and the rest of the world ride out the current bubblecovery before an epic world financial crush.


Bitcoin could very well be the last hope as the only viable alternative when all others fail. We are right on the forefront of a fire storm that will be unprecedented in history. Bitcoin may just save the world afterall as a chance to reset our entire economy to a new system, and we'll be ready for it when it does.

[tlr]

There is proven history (Tulip mania) that i can reach at least $ 500 000 per bitcoin (10 years of annual wage for bob the builder) There is no reason that that figure can not be surpassed tenfold or more.

Yeah except Bitcoins aren't tulips. They're not comparable like that.

If Satoshi decided there would be 42M Bitcoin then the value of each Bitcoin would be half of what it is right now. It's totally arbitrary.

[btchaver]

I thinks it adoption not a bubble if its a bubble it has a long way to go before it bursts.  Still only 1 billion into it not enough money for it to be unstable or burst i think it can take a lot more money and traffic for it to be considered a bubble.

[MaTachi]

I thinks it adoption not a bubble if its a bubble it has a long way to go before it bursts.  Still only 1 billion into it not enough money for it to be unstable or burst i think it can take a lot more money and traffic for it to be considered a bubble.

Didn't it hit 2 billions the other day? And how do you know when bitcoins gets unstable?

[jerkoff]

There is proven history (Tulip mania) that i can reach at least $ 500 000 per bitcoin (10 years of annual wage for bob the builder) There is no reason that that figure can not be surpassed tenfold or more.

Of course you'd have to realise that in 16th century Holland tulips were traded by rich businessmen (merchants) and 90% of the population were peasants and paupers whose wage was the bare minimum to buy food and not die from starvation, while a merchant would easily make 1000 times the average wage from trade.

And there are plenty of reasons, it's just that bubble fanatics get blinded to any risks or bad news and become unrealistically optimistic. Although tenfold of $500.000 is by far the most outrageous claim I've seen so far.

It's like 2000 all over again "hey, pets.com/worldcom/infospace has gone from $2 to $100 in just months, if I put all my life savings in it I'll be a millionaire when it reaches $5000."

Of course they all failed or lost huge value. Take http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inktomi whose shares went up, split a few times, and reached $241 per share for a market cap of $35 billion in 2000. In 2002 it was bailed out by yahoo for $235 million, or $1.63 per share, less than a percent of its peak value.

But even if almost everyone knew $35 billion for a midsize company was too much, there were still many people that said "hey $220 per share, if it goes to $8000 I'm rich" and put their savings in it.

[sacko]

Interesting chart: http://oi48.tinypic.com/2e0plop.jpg

[MaTachi]

Interesting chart: http://oi48.tinypic.com/2e0plop.jpg

What do you want to say with that? That is rising and is getting adopted incredibly fast?

[jrlichtman]

There are several separate things going on here.

1. Mt Gox has a backlog in the thousands. That will drive new money in for a while. All the press attention and negative market news elsewhere helps significantly, and may continue to help for a long while to come.

2. If you sit and watch one of the exchanges that has an open book, you can see that the price has support levels etc, just like a stock market. Implication is that the current price is a trade, like any other. Just let your winners run, and be prepared to back out if that ever changes.

3. Overall adoption level and transaction rate is going up. That - over time - makes the market more robust. That doesn't imply any specific price (as many others here have said), but it does mean that long term prospects for BTC are probably good.

4. Hypothetical economics stuff (deflationary, bad bad fiat currency, etc etc) - all nice on paper. Everyone has strong opinions. We'll see if any of them work out.

[BitcoinAshley]

http://konradsgraf.squarespace.com/blog1/2013/4/6/hyper-monetization-questioning-the-bitcoin-bubble-bubble.html

Lol when people comment on ZeroHedge bitcoin articles and say "lol... tulip mania, anyone?" AS IF every single price rise on everything in history has the exact same fundamentals as a tulip and can be compared and then used to extrapolate similar results from historical events.

The current rise in bitcoin price can EASILY be justified if you
(1) Take some time to study the fundamentals and how bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies and non-fiat stores and exchanges of value) works + it's many applications (and I mean REALLY study)
(2) Pay attention to what's going on around you... no, not the "official" inflation rates and Obama telling us we're in a recovery... look around the corner. Pay attention to the savings confiscation legislation slowly being introduced around the world, various manipulations of various markets, massive corruption in the fiat banking cartels and governments, alternative statistics from real economists rather than government shills...

There is not a doubt in my mind that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and if you think this is a bubble and Bitcoin will go back to $40 and sit quietly by the wayside for the next 25 years, you are deluding yourself. Wake up, kick the shepherd, leave your pasture, and become a world citizen.

[jerkoff]

The exchanges are risky since they're custom build amateur attempts, based purely on demand and supply provided by customers, without a marketmaker backing up

A few days ago someone sold 50 coins for euro on BTC-E, when there was less present in the total book. As a result it sweeped empty the total buy book, resulting in most of the coins being sold for 3 euro when the current price was 120 euro.
http://f.cl.ly/items/3d1c1V2E130E3C1M2H3A/Schermafbeelding%202013-04-08%20om%2001.28.10.png

Such things happen when amateurs program something from a programming perspective. Real exchanges would trigger a trading stop, pausing trades for 15 minutes after such a large price shift or deny trades that are outside a certain price range. But of course all mistakes and solutions that the real financial market have encountered the last 50 years have not yet reached these amateur exchanges, it's like starting all over in the 19th century.

Trading without market makers with only customers doing the trading is extremely risky. One network outage where the buy side of the book gets depleted and they will just lower the price to whatever is still in the book, even if that's a buy order for $0.01, and execute those out of bounds trades anyway.

[salty]

There are several separate things going on here.

1. Mt Gox has a backlog in the thousands. That will drive new money in for a while. All the press attention and negative market news elsewhere helps significantly, and may continue to help for a long while to come.

Not many people seem to be considering that Mt Gox's AML queue may also consist of miners waiting to cash out, imagine a small time miner who sells small amounts occasionally which means they've never had to think about the AML verification before and haven't set it up. The way things are looking now they are in a position to take their family on a nice holiday or pay off some student debt, whatever, without massively denting their holdings. Cashing out through an exchange would be a safe, legal option to raise the funds, which means joining the AML verification queue.....

[jrlichtman]

@jerkoff - totally agree with you regarding the exchanges.

When do you think we'll see BTC trading on EBS?

[zoolander]

There are several separate things going on here.

1. Mt Gox has a backlog in the thousands. That will drive new money in for a while. All the press attention and negative market news elsewhere helps significantly, and may continue to help for a long while to come.

I keep hearing this one but I think the backlog is what we in the start up industry call a "vanity metric". Sure it might be an indicator, but until people buy their coin, it doesn't guarantee anything.

When I got approved I didn't transfer a significant amount of FIAT straight away and watched the market closely before buying any coin. I started small and once I had some confidence, I made a bigger move. This was back in the days of $50 per coin and even then rapid rises scared the hell out of me. I wonder how I'd have felt about trying to buy in today given the exponential growth?

[Stampbit]

Price doesnt matter, volatility matters, and in those terms bitcoin is doing worse than ever before.

[MaTachi]

Price doesnt matter, volatility matters, and in those terms bitcoin is doing worse than ever before.

What do you mean? It's undervalued and hasn't reached its potential. Barely any sites take bitcoins today - so imagine its complete future potential! Of course it will have a incredibly high growth rate considering the huge adoption rate, therefore bitcoin is doing better than ever.

[jrlichtman]

Price doesnt matter, volatility matters, and in those terms bitcoin is doing worse than ever before.

Somebody should compile something like ^VIX for BTC. Would be interesting measure.