The bitcoin charade

[cheat_2_win]

If someone suddenly decided to sell a few thousand dollars worth of bitcoin, the price would drop to pennies.

Is this true? That would mean selling a few hundred BTC would drop the market to pennies.

lol.

..seriously, STOP THE FUD. don't you see what you do to half the ppl who come into this speculation forum?! - you make them cynical bears which leech for bitcoins death in order to profit a little bit.

i can't tell you how wrong the quote above me is.

sell some hundred coins -> nothing happens! seriously, what else do you exspect?!

sell some thousand coins -> nothing happens!

sell some hundred thousand coins -> price drops, yes, what the fuck else?!


disclaimer: excuse my rant, i kind of ate a neo-stalinist today..

Maybe I was exaggerating a bit, but the price of Bitcoin fluctuates hundreds of percent just based on someone buying or selling a few tenths of a percent of the available Bitcoin. I agree that I would and do buy Bitcoin regularly at the available price when funds are available. I watch mtgox live, and it does not take trading more than a few thousand Bitcoin to significantly change the price.

You might have been correct to say that six months ago. Now, dropping even tens of thousands of bitcoins in the market at once has very little effect in the price. If you look at the market depth some months back, you will see around 40000-50000 BTC. Now, it has almost become normal to see 100000 BTC.

We are also seeing less and less panic selling now than we used to see before.

For me, bitcoin is like a stock of a startup company. You never know whether it is going to succeed or not. But if it does, the payoff will be huge. So, never invest what you can not afford to lose.

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[Technomage]

You might have been correct to say that six months ago. Now, dropping even tens of thousands of bitcoins in the market at once has very little effect in the price. If you look at the market depth some months back, you will see around 40000-50000 BTC. Now, it has almost become normal to see 100000 BTC.

We are also seeing less and less panic selling now than we used to see before.

For me, bitcoin is like a stock of a startup company. You never know whether it is going to succeed or not. But if it does, the payoff will be huge. So, never invest what you can not afford to lose.

+1

This is how I see it as well.

[cbeast]

You might have been correct to say that six months ago. Now, dropping even tens of thousands of bitcoins in the market at once has very little effect in the price. If you look at the market depth some months back, you will see around 40000-50000 BTC. Now, it has almost become normal to see 100000 BTC.

We are also seeing less and less panic selling now than we used to see before.

For me, bitcoin is like a stock of a startup company. You never know whether it is going to succeed or not. But if it does, the payoff will be huge. So, never invest what you can not afford to lose.

+1

This is how I see it as well.

I'm more in line with BenRayfield in that it's a series of paradigm shifts. The grass roots effort will take too long to evolve. Fortunately (or not so), because it's all about money, there is a lot to offer for cash rich investors to get in on the ground floor with little risk.

[Hunterbunter]

I am surprised so many of you have faith in bitcoin which is obviously just another form of online gambling. A price that is unstable and set by which side of the bitcoin gamblers want to push it.

A person could certainly treat the BTC network as a speculative opportunity, to raise the number of USD/EUR/whatever that they have. These people have no interest in BTCs other than another commodity to trade, and merely try to take advantage of gross lopsided opportunities. Since they are all competing to out-do each other, the net effect is price volatility, but also liquidity in the market.

There is a second group of people for whom bitcoins are a paradigm shift in the globalization of currencies. A digital, decentralized non-counterfeit-able marker of value is a big deal, from the perspectives of wealth transfer and ease of use (once "inside"). For these people, who are starting to think in terms of living in and earning BTC, the exchange rate only becomes an issue when people don't accept btc's for goods or services. If you know you can earn 5 btc/day (or something), then you have up to 5 btc a day to spend on whatever you need to live.