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The only time HN is this interested in Bitcoin is when there's a bubble (2017)

33 pointsposted 7 months ago

(incoherency.co.uk)

59 Comments

raincole

7 months ago

Yeah, Bitcoin was in a big bubble in 2017. If you were dumb enough to buy BTC then, today your portfolio would be a devastating +400%.

griffzhowl

7 months ago

Only if you'd held on to it while it went from 17k to 3k a month later, and the many ups and downs since. That's not necessarily a sound investment strategy without hindsight

rvz

7 months ago

Remember what HN kept parroting in 2017? "bItCoIn is sCaM".

So much of a scam that buying that coveted Tesla Model S in 2017 would sure have held its value much better than Bitcoin did and by now in 2025, Bitcoin should be worthless. Right?

Not even close.

If Bitcoin was a scam, was it supposed to "crash" from $10k to $100k+ and that Tesla Model S "skyrocketed" from $100k+ to around $40k from its retail price.

Sounds like buying a Tesla Model S in 2017 was a scam.

AlexandrB

7 months ago

I'm confused. Who would think buying a car (any car) is an investment that would increase in value?

And just because the value of Bitcoin has gone up, doesn't mean it's not a scam. "Market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Bitcoin continues to fail at its stated goal of being a currency - it's more like digital gold that, unlike actual gold, would be worthless in a real global crisis. A lot of bitcoin-adjacent stuff has also collapsed since 2017 (NFTs, FTX). The idea of putting everything "on the blockchain" also seems to have died.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

cornholio

7 months ago

Bitcoin is still a criminal ecosystem in 2025. Its only real use case still is enabling illegal transactions and evading financial regulations, and that maintains its speculative value; but that's still a scam not a true investment just like a business used as a front for Mafia appears stable until it inevitably comes crashing down.

But I don't think anyone claimed criminality is not profitable. It can literally make you President.

diggan

7 months ago

> Bitcoin is still a criminal ecosystem in 2025

Welcome to reality, where good/neutral things sometimes are used for bad :) Name one financial system that doesn't have any elements of criminality involved in them.

> Its only real use case still is enabling illegal transactions and evading financial regulations, and that maintains its speculative value

So if I and others happen to have done at least one transaction with Bitcoin that wasn't illegal or evaded financial regulations, would presenting proof of that leading to you changing your view that there is no real use cases?

> that's still a scam not a true investment

Personally I draw the limit of what a "scam" is when it's intentionally misleading with the purpose of defrauding you. Bitcoin doesn't look like it's either of those things, but I will agree that the ecosystem has a lot of scammers within it, just like any financial system.

cornholio

7 months ago

> I and others happen to have done at least one transaction with Bitcoin that wasn't illegal or evaded financial regulations

Is it a transaction that would have likely been faster, more convenient, secure, cheaper and with less or zero volatility risk using a traditional, centralized funds transfer system, especially if both parties could agree beforehand on the best modern system for that use case instead of being forced to accept cumbersome antiquated things like credit cards?

Because nobody disputes payments are possible with cryptocurrency; just that the practical benefits for legal activities are non-existent or negative, so the only remaining draw are speculation and circumvention.

derangedHorse

7 months ago

I have used Bitcoin over lightning in a way that wouldn't be faster, secure, or cheaper. It could be made more convenient if Apple Pay allowed me to pop it up, but that's not a fundamental issue with the technology. The benefits of using it are no rent-seeking middle-men, increased privacy, and the underlying currency that provides a non-inflationary monetary policy. Within the last 30 days I've used it to buy burgers and was even subject to sales tax.

And about the volatility comment, "volatility" is measured according to a specific exchange rate and can't be measured when you haven't defined a baseline. Bitcoin has high volatility with respect to gold but has trended to having more upward volatility vs downward volatility (whereas the dollar is mostly down).

diggan

7 months ago

> Is it a transaction that would have likely been faster, more convenient, secure, cheaper and with less or zero volatility risk using a traditional, centralized funds transfer system, especially if both parties could agree beforehand on the best modern system for that use case instead of being forced to accept cumbersome antiquated things like credit cards?

It could have been more convenient if the fees weren't sky-high and the receivers currency wasn't tanking as the transfer was being made, yes.

But because of the context, and the middle-men involved (no direct bank<>bank transfer possible at all, needed 3rd party), the fees would have made the transaction cost about the same as the value that was being transferred.

I'm also not disputing that the existing "traditional" players could make to things cheaper and actually useful for more people, but they seem to refuse to do so as I'm guessing they'll lose out on a lot of profits if they did.

cornholio

7 months ago

Again, the point was to compare apples to apples, a completely new system that both parties need to adopt, cryptocurrency vs one of the modern fintech options available to both, not the entrenched incumbents which abuse their market position.

Now, it's plausible no such modern option existed in this specific case, but if that's the case, it's almost certainly a regulatory issue, since all big fintechs are under competitive pressure to expand aggressively. So, this, again, proves the crypto use case as primarily a circumvention tool.

There are definitely bad governments out there and I can sympathize with people trying to evade capital controls, mandatory exchange rates etc., but this is not a reason to dismantle the financial regulatory powers in any of the stable democracies of the free world.

To make an analogy, machine guns are definitely a powerful tool when you are fighting a tyrannical government, but nonetheless I don't want them to become available on my street. It's hard to even make a dual use argument for cryptocurrency, as a money transfer system it doesn't have substantial legal utilization after more than a decade of hitting the mainstream, it's still primarily a vehicle for money laundry, regulatory evasion and speculation.

timbit42

7 months ago

Bitcoin isn't anonymous. Cash is.

npoc

7 months ago

It's as anonymous as you want it to be.

AlecSchueler

7 months ago

> Remember what HN kept parroting in 2017? "bItCoIn is sCaM".

Honestly, no.

johnisgood

7 months ago

I was here, and they still keep saying the same thing. There was a recent submission about Bitcoin. People were still saying how it is a scam and whatnot.

Scam or not, many people have gotten rich off of it. I bet the people who kept saying it is a scam wish'd they bought when it was low, they would have been rich today, instead, they double down (because they completely missed their chance due to their opinion), which is to be expected.

Too bad, life goes on, and you most likely will never get ~10 BTCs for the price of a bread anymore.

AlexandrB

7 months ago

Many more people have also lost money on it[1]. A Casino is also a great "investment" if you only count the winners.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/bitcoin-crypto-bank-of-international-set...

johnisgood

7 months ago

I cannot imagine how people who have bought BTC early on for the price of bread lost their money. Care to shed some light on it? I understand that you cannot take out "lots of" money out of banks (that is how they work), but there are ways. Multiple cryptocurrency exchanges, etc.

AlecSchueler

7 months ago

2017 wasn't really "early on" and coins weren't trading for <5 euros so that doesn't seem entirely fair, given the original point.

nkrisc

7 months ago

You should slap whoever taught you that a car was an investment.

raincole

7 months ago

...I know what you're trying to say, but cars are the textbook example of assets that don't preserve value.

ArtTimeInvestor

7 months ago

People are generally not interested in discussing assets in depth. Or any other topic for that matter.

It would be so awesome to have a forum where intelligent, grown up people discuss the possible futures of Bitcoin. Or any other asset. But I have not found one yet. If anybody knows some place, please please post a link!

celticninja

7 months ago

We had that, it was bitcointalk, between 2011 and 2016 it was a great place to do business, meet other people interested in bitcoin and to make and create new things.

Then it slowly drifted into scammers and low quality begging posts.

HPsquared

7 months ago

Honestly LLMs are the best bet for intellectual discussion of obscure topics with a specific tone.

diggan

7 months ago

Honestly, no. When people seek for forums to connect with other humans, LLMs aren't a good alternative for that. And I say that as someone who generally find LLMs useful, I'm not a "AI is impeding doom" person, but their use shouldn't replace the human connection and human conversations.

scotty79

7 months ago

Is there update for 2025? This is a general rule of all media. After 4 cycles you can pretty much feel at which stage the BTC bubble is just by the amount of coverage there is. The current one feels sluggish.

Lerc

7 months ago

A bubble or two ago I hypothesised that the period is defined by how long the media feels is necessary to justify the narrative. It has to be just long enough that people op don't notice that they are saying the opposite of a previous story.

They run all the stories about how BTC lost 80% of its value without acknowledging that the top measurement was at the peak of spikiest part of the bubble where only half a dozen trades occured.

Then, after stories of how much value has been lost cease to be interesting enough to warrant further stories and noone is clinking on the stories that they do write. That's when it's time to start running the "It looked like bitcoin was dead, but it's coming back again, and this time it's stronger than ever!". Which promotes the next bubble that they can report on when it crashes.

There may be underlying value there, but the oscillations are driven by short term sentiment. I can't help but feel that their are news organisations that are happy to provide self forefilling prophecies as long as it provides more easy to write news.

roenxi

7 months ago

Of all the things, people calling Bitcoin a bubble would have to be the most reasonable in hindsight of any group who got a prediction wrong. It is hard to argue with the reasoning and the observations. Goes to show, the economy is a funny thing.

johnisgood

7 months ago

Well, they were wrong, and anyone who bought low before, are now rich today. It is quite funny if you think about it.

duckinho

7 months ago

Buying _now_ is buying 'low' too...

johnisgood

7 months ago

You created this account to say this? I mean sure, go ahead and buy a few million, just let me know in advance. ;)

In any case, when I said "low", I was referring to early Bitcoin days when 1 BTC cost'd a loaf of bread.

praveen9920

7 months ago

I remember when bitcoin post appeared first on HN. It was trending and lot of people were curious about technical details and people joking about viability as currency.

I even started mining for a brief time on work desktop which I had to uninstall immediately of course.

celticninja

7 months ago

Yeah I remember the white paper being posted in 2009, took another 2 years before I got into bitcoin.

The reason I know bitcoin has hit the mainstream and isn't going anywhere is in sort due to HN. This bubble has spurred zero posts as far as I can tell, or zero that gained any traction.

In part this is because there is nothing new to discuss. But in the past there was nothing new either, but it gained traction because of the numbers of comments.

Now I guess the naysayers have moved on the criticism of AI and the defenders don't feel like it needs defending anymore.

Welcome to the new asset class.

diggan

7 months ago

> This bubble has spurred zero posts as far as I can tell, or zero that gained any traction.

... Did you look? Quick search turns up a bunch of stories that were on the frontpage: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...

> But in the past there was nothing new either, but it gained traction because of the numbers of comments.

That's the opposite of how things are ranked on HN. Submissions with more comments than votes are being pushed down the frontpage, not up.

celticninja

7 months ago

2 posts on that page are less than 6 months old and they are both posts of the same thing.

diggan

7 months ago

All of them are less than 12 months old, and most of the results on the first search page been at one point on the frontpage.

Another search, limiting it to >50 points (so passed through the frontpage at one point) and within the last 12 months, showing ~26 results: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...

clippyplz

7 months ago

What? No, there are over 300 results when filtering by "last 6 months".

celticninja

7 months ago

Maybe I'm spending less time here then. Not necessarily a bad thing

AlexandrB

7 months ago

> Welcome to the new asset class.

Wasn't it supposed to be a currency people would buy stuff with that would eventually replace "fiat"? What happened to that?

wmf

7 months ago

That never made sense so it didn't happen.

celticninja

7 months ago

It did make sense for quite a while..I bought and sold stuff online and between 2011 and 2015/16 it was easier and cheaper to pay Chinese suppliers in bitcoin than trying to send international transfers. Think 20p a transaction Vs £25 flat fee for an international bank transfer.

It did make sense and it did happen. However it has now evolved into another asset rather than a currency.

wouldbecouldbe

7 months ago

BTC is still in a bubble and there is not much news about it :)

diggan

7 months ago

For how long does a "bubble" need to be in "the bubble" for it to not be considered a "bubble" anymore? I'm guessing there is a time limit involved here somewhere?

wouldbecouldbe

7 months ago

As long as there is no world use justifying it's exorbitant value pumped up by speculation.

The BTC holders trying to rebrand to a value storage instead of a currency is proof of this.

npoc

7 months ago

you can make money speculating that something will go down as well as up. It's not the reason for it's price to go up.

BTW, you call it's price exhorbitant - I say it's rediculously cheap at any price where you can still get someone to accept fiat tokens for it

diggan

7 months ago

> As long as there is no world use

Who judges this? Is "bubble" a personal/subjective thing then? Bitcoin is a bubble for you, because there is no use case, but not a bubble for others that can use it for any reason?

dmichulke

7 months ago

What you're saying is that the claim "it's a bubble" is not falsifiable (people move price and time targets) and therefore a belief and not scientifically grounded, just like a religion.

So any discussion with BTC bubble people is futile unless they are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

diggan

7 months ago

> What you're saying is that the claim "it's a bubble" is not falsifiable (people move price and time targets) and therefore a belief and not scientifically grounded, just like a religion.

No, I'm merely trying to understand what people's understanding of a "bubble" is. I couldn't care less if others consider Bitcoin a bubble or not, but after hearing "Bitcoin is a bubble" since ~2015 sometime, I feel like I misunderstand what a "bubble" is. The "tulip mania" seems to have been around 2-3 years long, the dotcom bubble around 10 years, so I guess it isn't impossible for a bubble to last 20 or even 30 years.

willis936

7 months ago

Economic downturn that motivates holders to liquidate. The house of cards would collapse very quickly if one whale cashed out. Everyone holding is facing a bad version of the prisoner's dilemma.

xtracto

7 months ago

It already happened several times for BTC. Look for ATH drawdown chart.

Bitcoin has lost 75% of its value 4+ times, but for some strange reason everytime it "comes back stronger".

My thesis is that, in all these years, the BTC price has been composed of 2 parts: Speculators and "believers". Speculators will buy and sell very fast as soon as the market moved or due to external phenomena. "Believers" will keep holding through everything.

Thing is, with each cycle there is more money on Believers than Speculators. This time, ETFs and institutions have placed a lot more money, so it seems there are more and more Believers. That's why you see retail Speculators saying that this cycle is "boring".

It's interesting to see how the price will keep stabilizing, as the ratio of Believers vs Speculators money gets larger (Speculators become a smaller and smaller % of the price).

I think this was the last cycle (halving cycle) with that much volatility.

Even if you are not into bitcoin, it's interesting to study its phenomena.

willis936

7 months ago

Backing the security with public programs just feels like the last step in a scam. As soon as BTC is backed by ETFs and government programs then suddenly the public are the people who make up the difference when whales cash out and crash the true value. It's a very efficient transfer of wealth. Backing a security like this adds no value to the public but puts large risk on it. There is no justification other than "we can steal from you so we will".

dnpp123

7 months ago

Your thesis is 10+ year old: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/speculative-attack/

Always good to find back well known results by first principles!

diggan

7 months ago

> The house of cards would collapse very quickly if one whale cashed out

So a thing is a "bubble" for as long as it is possible for it to collapse if whales cash out too quickly? In your mind, every financial system today is a bubble if I understand you correct then?