Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Bitcoin volatility paradox
by
Mota
on 22/07/2013, 21:03:06 UTC
yes, you are. bitcoins have indeed a limited supply, and stability in the price does indeed raise demand which in turn raises the price.
BUT hughe price increases usually come with observable causes in the real world: more news being posted and switch from cpu to gpu was the first jump in price, since gpu sales in the high end market went through the roof. The second jump was cyprus declaring bank accounts to be frozen, and asicminers/fpga's coming into play.
Note that btc prices still rose independent from those jumps, but those jumps were clearly visible nonetheless. And the famous bubble bursts were not real bubble bursts; both were made artificially (the first mt.gox? being hacked and the second mt.gox inability to process the huge amount of new customers and the resulting downtime/delay driving fears of another hack ).

And if you watch the graphs a little you will notice that the "buuble bursts" have only driven the bitcoin prices to a little more or less than before the jumps.ss

you're making up stories to explain the past:

  • "The second jump was cyprus declaring bank accounts to be frozen" <- wrong. jump started january, cyprus happened sometime in march. cyprus certainly helped the hype, but it wasn't the sole reason for the bubble
  • "and asicminers/fpga's coming into play" <- fpgas started in late 2011, asics started hitting late february, why would mining tech change cause hype?
  • "the first mt.gox? being hacked" <- 2011 bubble burst before the hack.

You don't seem to understand what a jump and a bubble burst are.
http://venturebeat.com/2011/06/19/popular-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox-hacked-prices-drop-to-pennies/
that was the cause for the first burst. a burst is NOT a slow prize drop, it's a sudden and massive fall in value (hence burst; not dribble...). The prize drop before was a normal low imo. The agressiv hacking attack was the cause for a hughe amount of confidence loss and the slow recovery afterward.
same for the "jump" that started in january. that is no jump, a jump is a sudde and massive rise in value. you can see that the jump started actually late march, early april; with the eu financial crisis at it's peak and after cyprus' banks unfroze bank accounts.
Also, with fpga's I did not mean the little fpga board constructions but the massive gh units. which came into play late 2012 with asics starting in early 2013.


Where are you getting this nonsense?

The 2011 mtgox hack happened 11 days AFTER the bubble pop.  Look it up.
New mining equipment has no effect on bitcoin price, it's the other way around.
And while you're not as obviously wrong about Cyprus, you're still basically wrong because it was just one bit of fuel for speculation, not ALL of it.



http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/20501_large_BitCoin_Transactions_Gox_2.jpg
I gave you sources for my statement, you gave none; if you would be so kind as to elaborate further I would be very grateful. I don't like to rummage the internet for hours just to find nothing substantial...
There was always a price increase AFTER new mining hardware were being sold, why should it be dependant on the prize? that's complete and utter bullshit, sorry. Miners buy their hardware not because the prize is high but because they casn get an edge over other miners. That was so with cpu -> gpu ->fpga->asic and will continue as long as there people who want a bigger piece of the pie.
And Cyprus was not all of it, in Germany we like to call it "Unzufrieden mit der Gesamtsituation", which basically means all is fucked up. There was the European crisis, tzhe dollar was weak because the us struggle to meet it's debt limit and a general FUD about financial investments. Amd guess what was stable? Gold and bitcoins.