• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Bitcoin price skyrockets, crashes, rinse, repeat, internet starts investing in tulips

Fury Sense

Member
Know how I know bitcoin is real? I just saw this post in the BST thread

Xqwh7qh.png


Just the code - 0.06 BTC

If you appreciate my black friday pricing and you don't have bitcoin, you can get some with Coinbase and my referral link :D

As of posting, that's valued at 32.8368 USD
no shame
 

bistromathics

facing a bright new dawn
owwwwwww...we're at $511 now for a BTC. really regretting buying another couple hundred dollars worth yesterday at 600. what was that you smart people were saying about "catching a falling knife"?

feels bad, man.
 
It's dropping so much right now. Why is that?

Must be China

China has blocked the country’s Bitcoin exchanges from accepting new inflows of cash, a move that imperils the much-hyped virtual currency in its biggest market.
The head of BTCChina, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange by trading volume, said he had received word at midday on Wednesday that his platform would no longer be able to accept renminbi from would-be Bitcoin buyers.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6707013a-67af-11e3-8ada-00144feabdc0.html
 

Eusis

Member
Well, think about it this way: would you really have held them all the way up to $1000? Or would you have sold them somewhere along the way, like probably at $5-$10, and be even more pissed at yourself now for having done so?
Yeah, you'd have to have been in the position to buy them THEN forget you had them, still be able to access them, and not notice their worth until it was crazy high. And even then I think it'd likely have been more pragmatic to slowly bleed them off over the last year rather than try to dump them all at once at $1000 per coin. Still, that'd get you a LOT of money if you started in March when they were $300-ish.
 

Fury Sense

Member
owwwwwww...we're at $511 now for a BTC. really regretting buying another couple hundred dollars worth yesterday at 600. what was that you smart people were saying about "catching a falling knife"?

feels bad, man.

3X9g2Zk.png


i think the best position now is a long one. if you can't hold you money in btc for more than a few months, take it out when it gets back to your original purchase price
 

Ripclawe

Banned
owwwwwww...we're at $511 now for a BTC. really regretting buying another couple hundred dollars worth yesterday at 600. what was that you smart people were saying about "catching a falling knife"?

feels bad, man.

back up to 659

as for the other coins, are they in use anywhere other than a speculative deal? At least with bitcoins, some businesses are using them. I never seen litecoins in use
 

usea

Member
I can never verify my identity on coinbase, so the wait time for buying coins is 4 days. Like, I don't know the year of the car I owned in the 90s or what month I signed the title. Also I think my address is wrong because I moved a few months ago.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
back up to 659

as for the other coins, are they in use anywhere other than a speculative deal? At least with bitcoins, some businesses are using them. I never seen litecoins in use

litecoin is the most credible. there are some (tiny) payment possibilities and it's the most likely as being the also ran. gold/silver comparison.

It's also tied pretty tightly to bitcoin in terms of crash/rise.

I've got loads at the moment. If the rate gets more favourable i think I'll transfer back to btc though.
 
I don't have much to say about Bitcoins, I'm afraid to get in to it and have no clue about whether it would be a good idea, but I heard a funny name for Bitcoins and I wanted to share. "Dunning-Krugerrands." Makes me laugh every time.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I wasn't altogether prepped to take advantage of the crash, unfortunately (having checking accounts ready to dump and so forth), but I stayed awake and watched for the bottom when I saw the news, managing to pick up 25 BTC @ $400.
 

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
I don't have much to say about Bitcoins, I'm afraid to get in to it and have no clue about whether it would be a good idea, but I heard a funny name for Bitcoins and I wanted to share. "Dunning-Krugerrands." Makes me laugh every time.

Don't. You're literally gambling.
 

Fury Sense

Member
I wasn't altogether prepped to take advantage of the crash, unfortunately (having checking accounts ready to dump and so forth), but I stayed awake and watched for the bottom when I saw the news, managing to pick up 25 BTC @ $400.
Fuckin' nailed it man. 677 on coinbase right now, that's 69% gain right there
I don't have much to say about Bitcoins, I'm afraid to get in to it and have no clue about whether it would be a good idea, but I heard a funny name for Bitcoins and I wanted to share. "Dunning-Krugerrands." Makes me laugh every time.
Don't. You're literally gambling.
Do. It's more fun than Halo 4.
 
I wasn't altogether prepped to take advantage of the crash, unfortunately (having checking accounts ready to dump and so forth), but I stayed awake and watched for the bottom when I saw the news, managing to pick up 25 BTC @ $400.
The rich get richer :)

Good job. I still feel it will drop again below $400 soon but semi-longterm (6-12 months) you will be laughing $$$$$.

Get on the litecoin train as well. Even if only to take advantage of the huge bubble when it gets listed on mtgox.
 

Fury Sense

Member
For anyone interested in maintaining their own wallet, I started the process today with bitcoin qt.

To run a wallet, you have to choose between thick client and thin client.

[URL=http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/11587/why-is-bitcoin-qt-startup-so-slow-compared-to-multibit]Pieter Wuille[/URL] said:
Thin clients do not validate transactions, they just assume that the longest blockchain only has valid transactions. Furthermore, thin clients do not help the network. Instead, they rely on full nodes (like Bitcoin-Qt) to do the heavy lifting.

So my (thick client) wallet balances is calculated from the full list of all bitcoin transactions ever.

3PV3UvW.png

VpYlMny.png

yvNYN8j.png


I've been syncing for 9 hours and this is how far I've gotten.
 
For anyone interested in maintaining their own wallet, I started the process today with bitcoin qt.

To run a wallet, you have to choose between thick client and thin client.



So my wallet balances is calculated from the full list of all bitcoin transactions ever.

3PV3UvW.png

VpYlMny.png

yvNYN8j.png


I've been syncing for 9 hours and this is how far I've gotten.
Good info. I really think someone needs to create an official thread for bitcoin and alt currencies (bitcoin and litecoin should be the main ones touched on in the op) but I suck at writing and am no expert by any means so I decided against doing it myself.

Why don't you create one, Fury? :)
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
I wasn't altogether prepped to take advantage of the crash, unfortunately (having checking accounts ready to dump and so forth), but I stayed awake and watched for the bottom when I saw the news, managing to pick up 25 BTC @ $400.

O_O nicely done.
god you could almost get your entire seed fund back and purchase more on the profits alone already if you wanted.

I'm in for about 1/20th of that only, but I've taken the view of the currency just crashes and jumps so often that I just try and sell all back to fiat when it's fairly steady/high, then patiently wait, next time the suicide hotline pops to the top of /r/bitcoin, just buy in totally again.

it's almost like clockwork how it crashes hopelessly and everyone just goes running straight back. Really fun to play. /standard disclaimer about disposable income.

A friend and I are both doing the same thing and we're getting to the point we're almost annoyed it's not MORE volatile. so addictive.

Good info. I really think someone needs to create an official thread for bitcoin and alt currencies (bitcoin and litecoin should be the main ones touched on in the op) but I suck at writing and am no expert by any means so I decided against doing it myself.

http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

^should be required reading for all interested in the cryptocurrency

edit:

from the PDF does anyone know

6. Incentive
By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned
by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides
a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them.
The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending
resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.
The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is
less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of
the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered
circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation
free.

The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to
assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it
to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to
find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than
everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth.

regards the bolded, if all of a sudden the number of coins was reached and now mining only produced transaction fees, would this essentially 'flatline' the price of a bitcoin? or would the rarity continue to inflate the price? I guess the price would keep going up over time if people keep using/holding the currency anyway right?
 

maharg

idspispopd
regards the bolded, if all of a sudden the number of coins was reached and now mining only produced transaction fees, would this essentially 'flatline' the price of a bitcoin? or would the rarity continue to inflate the price? I guess the price would keep going up over time if people keep using/holding the currency anyway right?

Since coins can be lost (wallet private keys disappearing) when the limit is reached they will only become rarer from that point on, so their value will increase (and this will make or keep it deflationary). The only thing the transaction fees do is encourage mining to continue after there is no longer a reward, they don't add any new money supply into the system (though they do redistribute it).

Note that the difficulty of mining would probably also go down considerably, unless mining fees became exorbitant.
 
If the prices dip below 600 ill buy 0.3 BTC as an experiment.. if done right a person can really take advantage of the fluctuations in the markets. What's the least you guys invested and what are some of your returns?

I wasn't altogether prepped to take advantage of the crash, unfortunately (having checking accounts ready to dump and so forth), but I stayed awake and watched for the bottom when I saw the news, managing to pick up 25 BTC @ $400.

are you planning to use the money to re invest in another crash? how did you manage to pick them up so quickly?
 

Fury Sense

Member
Bitcoin under 600 on coinbase now. I think today is a decent buy day. I think it could touch $540 at best this weekend. It's hard to predict. I think tomorrow will basically be the same as today, IDK. Mainly though, I think there's gonna be a nice christmas boost as the enthusiasts decide bitcoin makes a great christmas present. Also, more and more stores are accepting bitcoin, and it hardly seems like the market has reacted to Overstock.com's announcement at all.

I hate this 4-day processing on coinbase though. You can trade instantly if you have a visa credit card (not debit) to "validate your identity" (backup payment method), but unfortunately, that's not an option for me. They do lock you into the price when you click, so it's a pretty comfortable American site, but it's still harder to play with a 4-day delay. No market/limit orders either, which I think other exchanges probably offer.

Anyone have a good solution for price or volume alerts?

Of course, remember that this is just my opinion. This stuff fascinates me, but I'm no expert. Coinbase referral link ;D

For every friend you invite to Coinbase, we'll send both you and them $5 worth of bitcoin when they complete a buy or sell of at least $100!
 
I saw that Bitcoin suicide screencap and decided to get more laughs from the laughfactory itself and it did not disappoint. Straight in opening the page I see this:

I just got an email, it was addressed to someone I didn't know and from someone I didn't know, but received a copy through what I assume was Blind carbon copy (BCC).
It went:
Hi <name withheld in case genuine>,
still can't import the private key and I have 51.973444 BTC. I see the balance on blockchain.info but something is corrupt with my bitcoinqt client and I cannot transfer the BTC.
Here is a zip attached with my wallet.dat, and the password <link redacted>
Can you please transfer the BTC to the following address : <Bitcoin address redacted> ?
Thanks alot you save my life !
Now maybe it is genuine, but there's clearly a temptation (if you don't mind stealing) to download and open whatever the link links to. That makes me think it's a scam, and the link is most likely to a virus that detects your wallet.

Of course, I could be wrong and maybe the email was sent to me in good faith.
EDIT: Okay, carefully went poking about the Zip file (taking obvious precautions) that I downloaded from the link. Among other things, it contained a "password.txt" file that was actually a Windows executable.
Yeah, I think that removes doubt.
EDIT: For those not keeping track of this issue: Yes, it is a scam; and yes, it will lead to your Bitcoins being stolen if you open the zip and run the executable on a Windows computer.


The dude figured it out eventually but I am kinda worried now that Nigerian Princes will eventually adopt Bitcoins too.
 

Fury Sense

Member
I got 0.00001603 BTC free from https://trybtc.com. Just clicked through their quick tutorial and declined to share on facebook. That's worth about 1 cent right now. But hey, free money is free money :D

BTC recovered from the high 500s of yesterday and settled today at 625 after a brief high at 660. It hasn't moved at all and volume has been low. It's about 6am in China right now, and I don't know what to expect for the immediate term. Some Day traders from yesterday are sure to sell, but I think overall we're going to see a very strong positive trend over the next couple weeks. I'm pretty confident you could buy now and sell in a week and make a fun little profit. The people who do that (sell in a week) will drive the price down after the holidays, and that will open up another great buying opportunity.

Litecoin & everything else... no clue. I don't follow that. Those currencies can't do anything btc can't and for that reason I see them as doomed in the long term. Apparently ltc has been moving a lot, but idk why.
 
I've got a quick question to the *coin knowledgeable. I thought that one of the big draws of cryptocurrencies was that they were protected from inflation because there was a limit to the number of coins that could be made. Is that right?

And if the above is correct, doesn't the fact that you can make transactions with fractions of coins remove that advantage?
 

kick51

Banned
i'll just be sitting over here in fiat for a minute. i dont trust this much but i might just sit out the crash cycle unless LTC hits 10 again or watch for longer and pick another low point. its hard to look at this and want to buy in too high above 1 dollar.

doge coin kinda puts it into perspective that none the current coins will be the future of crypto.
 

Fury Sense

Member
I've got a quick question to the *coin knowledgeable. I thought that one of the big draws of cryptocurrencies was that they were protected from inflation because there was a limit to the number of coins that could be made. Is that right?

And if the above is correct, doesn't the fact that you can make transactions with fractions of coins remove that advantage?
From what I understand, inflation/deflation advantage comes from the predictability of supply due to the auto-adjustment of mining difficulty, not necessarily the total supply limit.

Here's a pretty good introductory video on cryptocurrency http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP9-lAYngi4
Andreas Antonopoulos via The Jefferson Club, Silicon Valley

I just started mining primecoin solo on my desktop. I wonder if anything will come of it.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
I've got a quick question to the *coin knowledgeable. I thought that one of the big draws of cryptocurrencies was that they were protected from inflation because there was a limit to the number of coins that could be made. Is that right?

And if the above is correct, doesn't the fact that you can make transactions with fractions of coins remove that advantage?
as i understand it it's a 'deflationary currency' because as they come about and people get em, they essentially get more rare, so the price goes up.

I don't really know how dividing the coins adresses that. I think it does.... but I dont know. people already want to use the notation mbtc I think.
 

Phoenix

Member
as i understand it it's a 'deflationary currency' because as they come about and people get em, they essentially get more rare, so the price goes up.

I don't really know how dividing the coins adresses that. I think it does.... but I dont know. people already want to use the notation mbtc I think.

The last explanation I heard about the deflationary nature of the currency was because bitcoins get lost to the network as people lose their keys due to not backing up or just forgetting the passwords and such. Since you can't do anything without those signatures, they are gone forever.

I saw a good video about the whole thing a while back when I was trying to figure out the arbitrage mechanism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE

Possibly the shortest and more user friendly video I've seen on bitcoin.
 

tokkun

Member
There has been another round of tumult in the DarkNet Market sphere. Did BTC prices respond, or are they too insulated with speculators now?
 

usea

Member
There has been another round of tumult in the DarkNet Market sphere. Did BTC prices respond, or are they too insulated with speculators now?
Prices haven't moved much in like 9 hours. But I dunno what timeframe you're talking about.
 

Fury Sense

Member
Christmas bump in full effect as I predicted! It just jumped out of its 660 stupor into the 700s.

Expecting it to struggle to rise a bit more (I could see an 800 bubble happening), then crash back down to the 630-660 range later tonight or tomorrow. If we're lucky the reaction will be harsh and the USD exchange will dip below 600 to allow another good buy opportunity, but I don't see it going below 590.

In early 2014 I see slow growth as it seems to me that major regulatory news with USA and China have been settled for the short term. Some favorable rulings in uninvested/undecided countries would help it and vice versa. As before, know that I am spouting non-expert opinions and have a shameless coinbase referral link for you to use. If you spend $100 with it, we both get $5, then you can post yours for the next person.

Anyone else still following this stuff? I don't want to be the only one here that's full of shit :D
 

Sun Drugs

Member
I follow it pretty closely. I have two machines mining at a total rate of about 750 KH/s, so I am often changing which cryptocurrencies I am mining.
 
Christmas bump in full effect as I predicted! It just jumped out of its 660 stupor into the 700s.

Expecting it to struggle to rise a bit more (I could see an 800 bubble happening), then crash back down to the 630-660 range later tonight or tomorrow. If we're lucky the reaction will be harsh and the USD exchange will dip below 600 to allow another good buy opportunity, but I don't see it going below 590.

In early 2014 I see slow growth as it seems to me that major regulatory news with USA and China have been settled for the short term. Some favorable rulings in uninvested/undecided countries would help it and vice versa. As before, know that I am spouting non-expert opinions and have a shameless coinbase referral link for you to use. If you spend $100 with it, we both get $5, then you can post yours for the next person.

Anyone else still following this stuff? I don't want to be the only one here that's full of shit :D
I still do dude. I'm pretty much done with buying. Now all I'm waiting for is LTC to rocket to $100+ as I expect it will in the new year and I'm going to be all out. That should allow me to live comfortably for a while. Lol
 
guys, a question: I have a slow computer that I leave pretty much always on for torrents and other stuff. I know it's not any good for mining on its own but apparently there are mining groups. Would that be worth the while (meaning it would at least help pay the e. bill) considering I also find the whole thing very interesting and would like to give it a try?
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
guys, a question: I have a slow computer that I leave pretty much always on for torrents and other stuff. I know it's not any good for mining on its own but apparently there are mining groups. Would that be worth the while (meaning it would at least help pay the e. bill) considering I also find the whole thing very interesting and would like to give it a try?
No
 

Fury Sense

Member
guys, a question: I have a slow computer that I leave pretty much always on for torrents and other stuff. I know it's not any good for mining on its own but apparently there are mining groups. Would that be worth the while (meaning it would at least help pay the e. bill) considering I also find the whole thing very interesting and would like to give it a try?
You could probably have a little success mining in a pool for some (literally) worthless, less popular coin.


Ok... prediction time

I was right about the christmas bump, but the subsequent crash has not happened as I would have liked (dropped from 750 but only down to 710ish). We're still in a holiday period though, so maybe it will drop after a new years bump? The way btc retained its value this week really threw me off. I'm going to predict that it will drop over the course of January, but then it will continue to rise. Buying in might not ever be as obvious a choice as it has been before. I think day-trading is still viable, but coinbase non-verified 4-day buys will not be acceptable for rapid buy/sell. Either go long or go fast.

I sold my quarter coin at 694 (dammit) after buying at 559 which was a nice $30 win. If it gets below 694 I'll buy a whole coin. I may buy back in without that condition, but I won't be as happy about it as I'd like to be. Using ZeroBlock on iphone to watch prices.
 

bistromathics

facing a bright new dawn
Guess you should never store your coins in online wallets.

That's probably good advice - I have more faith in mtgox than I should. Haven't even bothered getting verified to cash out my initial $1k seed money just sitting there in dollars. SWIM definitely got burned for a chunk of BTC change from the initial SR 1.0 bust. And yet SWIM still has some BTC that's been sitting in their SR 2.0 wallet for a few months.
 
Top Bottom