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Bitcoin Businesses

Bitcoin Hits New Record, This Time With Less Talk of a Bubble (nytimes.com) 134

Bitcoin is back. Again. From a report: Nearly three years after it went on a hair-bending rise and hit a peak of $19,783, the price of a single Bitcoin rose above that for the first time on Monday, according to the data and news provider CoinDesk. The cryptocurrency has soared since March, after sinking below $4,000 at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic. Bitcoin's latest climb is different from its last spike in 2017, which was driven largely by investors in Asia who had just learned about cryptocurrencies. Back then, the digital token soon lost momentum as people questioned what it could do other than allow for easy online speculating and drug and ransom payments.

While those questions remain, Bitcoin is now being fueled by a less speculative fever. Buyers -- led by American investors, including companies and other traditional investors -- are treating Bitcoin as an alternative asset, somewhat like gold, according to an analysis from the data firm Chainalysis. Rather than quickly trading in and out of it, more investors are using Bitcoin as a place to park part of their investment portfolios outside the influence of governments and the traditional financial system, Chainalysis and other industry firms said. "It's a very different set of people who are buying Bitcoin recently," said Philip Gradwell, the chief economist at Chainalysis, which analyzes the movement of cryptocurrencies. "They are doing it in steadier amounts over sustained periods of time, and they are taking it off exchanges and holding it as an investment."

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Bitcoin Hits New Record, This Time With Less Talk of a Bubble

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  • by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:20PM (#60779066)

    as they always say before the crash

    • I want to mod this +1 insightful but it hardly takes a lot of "insight" to see where this is going.

      That said, I might just buy some when it goes below $5000 again. There's an infinite supply of idiots out there, might as well get in on the action.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          It's *exactly* like gold [macrotrends.net].

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          "Somewhat" as in "not in the least"? I can agree to that.

          • "Somewhat" as in "not in the least"? I can agree to that.

            • impractical to convert and use unlike cash - Check
            • orders of magnitude lower transaction throughput than credit cards - Check
            • value is based on an arbitrary financial thinking rather than real supply and demand - Check
            • bunch of shoddy speculators trying to push you to buy it - Check
            • has a marginal connection to Slashdot through computer related use - Check

            I guess there is a key difference. You can make teeth and other trinkets out of gold. Also gold is lots less likely to suddenly be replaced when someone come

        • by neonman ( 544 )

          But the article said its somewhat like gold! :D

          At least gold has industrial uses.

          • But the article said its somewhat like gold! :D

            At least gold has industrial uses.

            Even a tulip has more intrinsic value than a bitcoin

        • But the article said its somewhat like gold! :D

          In the same way that rhinestones are somewhat like diamonds.

      • by Qten ( 7504110 )
        There's an infinite supply of idiots out there, but limited supply of Bitcoins :-)
    • by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @02:22PM (#60779338)
      New, improved, with LESS BUBBLE! Get in NOW! while it's still nice and FROTHY!!! FROSTY!!!
    • ...only this time EVERYONE pays through all the global warming needlessly added to the system. [digiconomist.net]

      It's basically as if butcoiners have all gone steampunk, shoveling coal onto a giant fire, which runs their lottery ticket machines.

    • it's different this time, as they always say before the crash

      Well, actually, the bubble behavior may be different. The previous four (?) 75% percent crashes after huge runups were pretty much based an techy speculators. Now that Wall Street and Main Street speculators have joined in the crash behaviors may very well be a bit different. Different population, different behaviors.

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      I noticed that msmash has been pumping Bitcoin extra hard in his Slashdot submissions lately. I guess that he's planning on dumping around $20,000.

  • It's a bubble, pass it on.

    • The fact that a "currency" can go from being valued at $4000 to $20,000 in the span of a few months should tell you all you need to know about whether this is a bubble. That sort of instability goes both ways, and while it may be going up right now, history has shown time and again that it can and almost certainly will go down even faster.

      Maybe it will rise again after that, but maybe not. So far as I'm aware (and my info may be out of date since I don't keep up) Bitcoin still hasn't done anything to addres

  • So, this is the second article hyping bitcoin today. I would suspect there's an attempt to drive its price up for some people to cash out, but this is a reputable nerd site, it must simply be news for nerds.

    • Nah, it's just clickbait.

    • by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:40PM (#60779158)
      Cryptocurencies are very much like multi-level marketing or pump & dump scams - the only way the person makes a profit is by convincing other people to buy in at a higher price. Unfortunately sites like Slashdot, but particularly 24/7 business news perpetually need something to fill air time.
      • set by money laundering and drug purchase transactions. It's gonna be *real* interesting if those 2 Senate seats in Georgia go blue though, because the Dems are going to legalize Marijuana nationally, and when that happens there's going to be a large drop off in Bitcoin transactions once folks can buy weed with a credit card.
        • by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Do you really think people are using BTC not simply cash to by weed?
      • Let me ask you this. Are you buying other "real" currencies to make a profit? Same with bitcoin.

        • by Luthair ( 847766 )
          No, no I'm not. Its also a false equivalence because there isn't a meaningful number of people using BTC as a currency.
        • Bitcoin is not a currency. A currency is something generally accepted for a transaction.

          Well unless you want to spend all your time buying drugs and kiddy porn, for that Bitcoin is a currency.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      msmash bought at the last peak and wants to cash out with a profit.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:28PM (#60779104)

    Let me introduce you to Mr. Dump.

  • I bought for $11 (and mined some in a pool) and sold it all for $1k/btc. Obviously if I had a time machine or crystal ball I would have rather sold for $20k, and bought (or mined) a lot more than I did. Sadly I don't have an infinite amount of time and money to invest in all the "sure things" people show me.

    • Yours is the reason I'm not kicking myself for not buying in at $1. I would have sold it at $100 (if I hadn't lost them).

    • > I bought for $11 (and mined some in a pool) and sold it all for $1k/btc.

      Bitcoin is for people who dislike the limitations and downsides of national fiat currencies like the dollar. If that doesnt describe you, then why did you buy in? Do you like gambling?

      The kind of people who should be messing around with bitcoin arent the types who would ever sell if for US dollars.

      I never understood people who would invest in something without understanding the very first thing about it.

      • If that doesnt describe you, then why did you buy in? Do you like gambling?

        I used it to buy things online. I bought some used music gear and some DIY electronics kit from an independent maker. For person-to-person transactions it seemed pretty good. But I also had a fair amount in my wallet that I sat on for a long time, decided to trade it in for cash when it was clear that I wasn't likely to spend the rest of what I had.

        The kind of people who should be messing around with bitcoin arent the types who would ever sell if for US dollars.

        You paint a broad brush. Is this meant rhetorically or are you serious? Care to elaborate?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Isn't it *extremely* difficult to even mine a single bitcoin now? I thought it was concluded a year ago that the cost of electricity and hardware almost made bitcoin mining impractical. Is this still the case?
    • by Sebby ( 238625 )

      Isn't it *extremely* difficult to even mine a single bitcoin now? I thought it was concluded a year ago that the cost of electricity and hardware almost made bitcoin mining impractical. Is this still the case?

      How typical of the Bitcoin boosters to mod down a perfectly valid post.

    • by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:46PM (#60779196)

      Isn't it *extremely* difficult to even mine a single bitcoin now?
      Is this still the case?

      Yes, and it shall forever be. Bitcoin is an ecological nightmare.

      • by J-1000 ( 869558 )

        Isn't it *extremely* difficult to even mine a single bitcoin now?

        Is this still the case?

        Yes, and it shall forever be. Bitcoin is an ecological nightmare.

        Given that we can't just take Bitcoin away from people, how do we solve this?

        • by Luthair ( 847766 )
          Discourage people from buying into the nonsense, eventually even the diehards will lose interest from the constant price manipulation and it won't be economically viable.
        • Owning or transmitting Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency has negligible costs. Proof of work mining is what sucks up all the electricity. Newer cryptocurrencies using proof of stake for example are much more Eco-friendly. At best as the block reward continues to shrink over time BTC miners may find it sustainably unprofitable to mine BTC and the ecological impact will shrink.
    • Isn't it *extremely* difficult to even mine a single bitcoin now? I thought it was concluded a year ago that the cost of electricity and hardware almost made bitcoin mining impractical. Is this still the case?

      That and this from summary:

      ....more investors are using Bitcoin as a place to park part of their investment portfolios outside the influence of governments and the traditional financial system, Chainalysis and other industry firms said. "It's a very different set of people who are buying Bitcoin recently," said Philip Gradwell, the chief economist at Chainalysis, which analyzes the movement of cryptocurrencies. "They are doing it in steadier amounts over sustained periods of time, and they are taking it off exchanges and holding it as an investment."

      If his analysis is correct, that means investors are losing faith in traditional financial institutions - or at the very least - hedging against catastrophic failure or collapse. I once read an analysis of the effects of the Plague on the European peasant system and how to transferred power from the land owners to the peasants.

      Wars and mass disease causes mass changes in society and economies.

      No one can predict the future but one can (maybe) prepare for Black Swan events if one

      • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        If that's what they are doing, it's hilarious. The idea that a society in which - say - the US dollar has totally collapsed would be the slightest bit interested in bitcoin is nonsensical. In that scenario, medical supplies and bullets would be a better bet.

        If people are switching to bitcoin it's not because they have no faith in traditional financial systems, it's because they want to be immune to government regulation - including, but not limited to, taxes.

        • Dumping my APPL stock to buy Dogecoin!

        • Re:Mining difficulty (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Comrade Ogilvy ( 1719488 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @03:58PM (#60779750)

          If people are switching to bitcoin it's not because they have no faith in traditional financial systems, it's because they want to be immune to government regulation - including, but not limited to, taxes.

          That may be true but probably not in the way that most people on slashdot think of it. If I am a member of the Russian or Chinese economic elite, there is a huge incentive to squirrel away a small portion of my wealth such that my beloved family can flee overseas. For this purpose, I may be willing to pay a very very large risk premium for portability and opaqueness.

          Invest in frothy real estate? I may well lose 30% of my money, but I still keep some of my money. Unfortunately, my home gov't may well be able to track this stuff down through public records.
          Invest in frothy cryptocurrency? I may well lose 75% of my money, but this is very portable and hard to track, when my son goes on the lam.

      • How do you buy bitcoin? Through exchanges. What do exchanges require? Positive proof of identity. The idea that the Feds aren't tracking and analyzing all bitcoin transactions is laughable. As is the whole notion that bitcoin is anonymous.
    • By design, bitcoin gets harder and harder to mine, in the sense that each new bitcoin takes more processing power than the previous ones. Since processing speed per watt of power consumed hasn't risen as quickly, each bitcoin requires more and more electricity, making it more and more expensive. If you are designing a currency that you want to have ever-increasing value, this is a pretty good formula -- prices will continue to rise predictably, as long as you can sustain sufficient interest to keep making m

      • Since processing speed per watt of power consumed hasn't risen as quickly, each bitcoin requires more and more electricity, making it more and more expensive

        It's self-regulating, at least according to the interest. As more people mine, bitcoin gets more expensive to mine, but if people stopped mining, there would be less computation needed to mine.

        Maybe a cryptocurrency could be issued based on proof-of-work doing something useful: offer units of computation into a pool for public use, and receive some cryptocurrency for each TFLOP completed.

        I think there are/were attempts to do that, but it makes the currency centralized on whatever "pool" it is based on. I don't think there's a way to do it and keep the decentralization. Brute-forcing hashes (what bitcoin uses) is probably one of the few things we can e sure cannot be cheated (well, unless you manage to

      • by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

        "By design, bitcoin gets harder and harder to mine, in the sense that each new bitcoin takes more processing power than the previous ones."

        Simply false. In fact the intrinsic block reward for mining **DROPS** on a regular basis ('Halvenings').

        The difficulty only adjusts to keep the hash rate at an average of 1 block per 10 minutes.

      • > I wonder if it would be possible to make a cryptocurrency that was more capital-intensive or more labor-intensive instead of energy-intensive?

        Yes, that's what Ethereum 2.0 is all about. Proof of Stake (PoS) instead of Proof of Work (PoW). Basically you "stake" money in escrow in order to be able to process transactions and get rewards. But if you mess with the network your escrowed money gets penalized. ETH2 is based more on game theory than energy-intensive mining.
    • Isn't it *extremely* difficult to even mine a single bitcoin now? I thought it was concluded a year ago that the cost of electricity and hardware almost made bitcoin mining impractical. Is this still the case?

      In the sense of the distributed sort of mining that the security model assumes yes. However if you happen to be next to cheap hydro that will permit commercial mining operations it can be profitable. Which is how we get to today's situation where 70% of miners are located in a single country, dependent upon that government's cheap electricity.

      Now bitcoin evangelists may counter that this government would never force its local miners into performing a 51% attack to reverse or divert some transfer it dispr

    • This question makes me wonder what the price elasticity of supply [wikipedia.org] for BTC is. I'm thinking it's definitely way less than one, and probably closer to zero than one but not there yet. The system is designed to eventually reach a fixed supply, so elasticity should tend to zero.

      The difficulty of creating new ones is what helps it go up so fast--but it's no guarantee of ever increasing prices, as people often forget that price is the intersection of supply and demand curves.

      The short-run elasticity is certainl

  • by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @01:40PM (#60779162)

    Bitcoin: for the other 1%, this time that 1% is all the geeks.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Nah, people who have no idea what Bitcoin actual *is* are trading; in fact there are apps out there which let anyone get into cryptocurrency arbitrage -- their selling point is simplicity. You don't need to understand anything to use them. The advertising leans heavily on FOMO.

      If you go by Bitcoin holdings, about half are owned by entities that have a thousand or more BTC -- or about $20 million. But there are a lot of small fry investing small amounts that are, to them, significant.

  • "It's totally not a heist, this time!", the wolf said. "I'm just telling you how great your fence is, so you can sleep well."

  • The thing is just that those with a clue have gotten tired of pointing out time and again how utterly stupid the "inverstors" are.

    • by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      "Always a bigger fool" also means that when everyone else has bought into the system, the *greatest* fools are those who denied the new reality to the end.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Nope. The greatest fools are those that buy in late. And lose everything. There is no "new reality", just a very old scam in a new variant.

  • So far my $30 stake is up to $62. I'm rich! lolz
  • I never heard any Bitcoin talk about a bubble, actually no coin whatsoever.

  • Bitcoin is not "back", its price pumping is on small volume, and of course there is just as much talk as ever by those with actual functioning neurons that this is yet another bubble for suckers that will pop.

    Once again low watt bulbs around here keep pumping this game token.

  • How many people are able to cash out a significant holding?

    I'm talking about sizable amounts: 5, 6 or 7 digits of USD. Not just the part about Btc exchanges, but getting the cash into a private citizen's bank account, in a western, regulated, country, without getting flagged as a criminal or money launderer

    P.S. I am not in that fortunate position, but I see a lot about how to buy Btc and very little from individuals who have actually got a wad of cash in their hand from it. I am sure that every man and hi

    • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @02:30PM (#60779352)

      Your question is answered and it is trivially easy. When you sell your bitcoin, if it was purchased as investment you fill out form 8949 via the Form 1040 Schedule D. If you mined, it's Form 1040 Schedule 1 âoeAdditional Income and Adjustments to Incomeâ on line 8 "Other income." Note if you are mining, you may be self-employed, for example if you want to claim expenses related to mining. You can also deduct if you used part of your home for mining operation.

      https://www.irs.gov/individual... [irs.gov]

      In any case, the bottom line is you pay your goddamn taxes on that "wad of cash in their hand from it", and all is fine. Common sense, really.

  • "It's a very different set of people who are buying Bitcoin recently,"

    They're wearing suits, but they're no different than anyone else who is evading the government and taxation.

    And who is making the statements about these "very different" people? It's people who are trying to get others to trust into crypto. That's who https://www.chainalysis.com/ [chainalysis.com] is.

    Nothing is different here.

    • "It's a very different set of people who are buying Bitcoin recently,"

      They're wearing suits, but they're no different than anyone else who is evading the government and taxation.

      I have just been reading the history of the 2008 financial crisis. It amazes me how reckless the grey-suited bankers could get when intoxicated by the smell of money. "Please, please, borrow some money. No paperwork. You don't even need a job." Or something like that.

  • I believe that the block chain currency ecosystem provides value. But I do not believe that Bitcoin specifically has the necessary similarities to something like gold to last in the long term.

    My reasoning:
    1. Cryptocurrencies tend to provide provable value to the degree they are traded
    2. Cryptocurrencies are actually very easy to "print", and technical improvements can be made to new competitors
    3. Gresham's law suggests that a "good enough" competitor to Bitcoin can cause a downward trend in Bitcoin tran

  • Bitcoin is now being fueled by a less speculative fever. Buyers -- led by American investors, including companies and other traditional investors -- are treating Bitcoin as an alternative asset, somewhat like gold, according to an analysis from the data firm Chainalysis. Rather than quickly trading in and out of it, ...

    Speculative does not mean fast twitchy trading. Speculative can absolutely have a longer multiyear time horizon.

    And Bitcoin is NOT somewhat like gold, that's evangelist BS. It has zero salvage value. Even a Tulip has more intrinsic value that a bitcoin.

    ... more investors are using Bitcoin as a place to park part of their investment portfolios outside the influence of governments and the traditional financial system, Chainalysis and other industry firms said.

    OK now this firm just lost credibility, playing word games with "more". The institutional and casual investors are not trying to hide money. They are jut putting a small portion of their portfolio on a long shot. High risk but high reward. Long term specu

    • A virtual commodity being like gold is not a good investment. Precious metals have been used for currency for thousands of years. That does not mean that using gold or silver as money is a particularly good way of doing business. It is superior to barter for practical reasons, but only if people agree on the value of it when trading. There is perhaps a point that precious metals are useful for currency, as a small amount of precious metal is worth a lot of money, which is just a matter of physical compactne

      • Of course evangelists will quickly point out that you can hand over bitcoins very easily for many real world transactions. The point they leave out(1) is that the recipients of bitcoins tend to do all their accounting and pricing in fiat and never see nor touch a bitcoin. They rely on virtual currency payment processors to handle the coins and give the seller the fiat they originally specified.

        So virtual currency like bitcoin can have some utility as a transfer vehicle, fiat X to fiat Y. Its a rival to P
  • ...it's a bubble.

  • Less talk by who, the people planning the pump and dump?
  • Bitcoin is now being fueled by a less speculative fever.

    Sounds like a safe investment.

    Buyers -- led by American investors, including companies and other traditional investors -- are treating Bitcoin as an alternative asset, somewhat like gold

    So completely speculative.

    Can we cut the shit? Investing in something that doesn't have or doesn't produce anything of intrinsic value is ridiculously speculative*. Investing in money, futures or cockroach races is gambling. Call it that. The people who make money are t

  • are treating Bitcoin as an alternative asset

    So like we all keep saying, it's not a currency then. Currency is meant to be spent. Not an asset to hold on to. Calling it an asset is yet another admission that this stuff is nothing more than another housing market situation. Just like most people don't go around buying and selling things using houses as the unit of price measurement, cryptocurrency has no actual use.

  • Hey! Guys, I would suggest checking this coolest Bitcoin casino called TrustDice: https://trustdice.win./ [trustdice.win.] Check it now! :)

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