On: Bitcoin's Black Friday

[derrida]

Don't upvote this article. It hasn't addressed LulzSec's claim that they were selling off. It is back up to around $25 again.

[tomkarlo → derrida]

Even if that's true, it should raise flags that one party selling into a market can do this... shows the bid is thin and liquidity generally poor.

[Symmetry → tomkarlo]

I was help a friend work out whether it made sense to start paying for Amazon EC2 to mint bitcoins. I can tell you that yes, thin bids and poor liquidity was exactly what I found.

[hugh3 → derrida]

And if you can't trust the claims of LulzSec, whom can you trust?

[derrida → hugh3]

I am not saying to trust LulzSec, but to address this information? Also the price is roughly 24 hours old. I don't think this article deserves to find its way on the front of Hacker News, by the time it did, the information contained in would be 36 hours old and the numbers cited off by a factor of 4.

Although I must admit, the Financial Times covering bitcoin is news in itself.

[krschultz → derrida]

"36 hours old and the numbers cited off by a factor of 4"

Just what I want in my currency . . .

[derrida → krschultz]

I am not advocating or attacking bitcoin.

[gwern → derrida]

LulzSec's claim has been discussed on Reddit and the Bitcoin forum. The selloff bitcoins are apparently from very old blocks, and since LulzSec is a recent phenomenon...

[pnathan → derrida]

Yeah, bitcoin is getting some high level interest, unquestionably.

[pbhjpbhj → derrida]

I said at the time that LulzSec's claims were possibly an attempt to deflate the market to gain an easy in. With a small market a big buy in should itself create inflation of the price.

If I was right then LulzSec or whoever paid him just minted it ... or at least they did if they can ever get their money out again.

[derrida → derrida]

I just got down voted for pointing out the article is factually wrong and suggesting that it not be up voted for that reason. Believe what you want to believe internets!

[brown9-2 → derrida]

What is factually wrong about the article? It seems to me that what it is reporting is the dramatic drop on Friday.

Whether or not the price later regained what it lost on Friday does not really impact the main point of the article - the existence of such a drop, no matter how temporary it was.

[hugh3 → derrida]

I can't speak for anyone else but personally I downvoted you for:

a) Telling people not to upvote something, and

b) Justifying that in terms of something I'd never heard of (what's this about lulzsec's claim?)

Most of the time when an article shows up on HN there's a bunch of comments criticising the article for being, in some way, incomplete or wrong. But generally they don't directly tell people not to upvote the article. If you wanna criticise the article just say "One important factor which this article doesn't mention is that LulzSec said the other day that [blah blah details for the uninitiated]"