[kiba]

Anybody can send 300,000 BTC back and forth between their computers. It doesn't mean something.

However, it is significant when somebody won one of the largest bounty by performing immensely useful work such as the production of a well polished animation video that is designed to introduce users to bitcoin.

[jedsmith]

> Anybody can send 300,000 BTC back and forth between their computers.

You assume that's what it was. Calling the bounty in the headline ~$6,000 is disingenuous, too, because dumping the BTC into the market would drop the price significantly. You'd never be able to move it for $6,000, currently. You're talking about more than the daily Mt. Gox volume.

(Yes, you might be in your domain, but there are other people familiar with BitCoin present. It bugs me when those with domain-specific knowledge assume people in alternative forums don't have a clue.)

[kiba]

You assume that's what it was. Calling the bounty in the headline ~$6,000 is disingenuous, too, because dumping the BTC into the market would drop the price significantly. You'd never be able to move it for $6,000, currently. You're talking about more than the daily Mt. Gox volume.

It's actually hard to say. Mt. Gox order volume is partly hidden because of dark pool order. What people see might not be an indicated amount of bitcoin on the market.

[jedsmith]

Dark liquidity still affects a market, it just affects it less.

BitCoin is fascinating to me because there are people who are absolutely absorbed in it, but it's unlikely to get traction outside of its current domain. The fact that it's moving for real money is interesting, though, and mining or small trades is currently worth it.

I wouldn't dump my life into it, though. Outside regulation picking up on it is likely to be interesting, as well. The system itself is a prime target for laundering money, if the market gets to a point where it can support enormous trades.

[shazow]

That's not very fair to assume it has to happen all at once or never at all. I'm betting someone could exchange 8500 bitcoins over the next few months and get a good rate on it without disrupting the economy significantly.

Especially since Bitcoin has been getting a good amount of notice lately, lots of new people coming in with small buys if only for the novelty of it.

[beala]

Calling the bounty in the headline ~$6,000 is disingenuous, too, because dumping the BTC into the market would drop the price significantly.

4 upvotes and no one actually bothered to check. Good job, Internet. Quite disingenuous.

I imported the data from Mt. Gox (main bitcoin exchange) into a spread sheet and calculated how much his $8500 BTC is worth if he sold it all right now: $5671.23

[jedsmith]

It sounds suspiciously like you're accusing me of something. The statement after the word "because" in your quote kind of matters to the original sentiment, and you happily ignored it in your calculations. It doesn't take a rocket economist to do:

    Quantity x Spot Price = "Value"

However, it also doesn't take a rocket economist to figure out that value there is meaningless, since (a) you're using the spot price, (b) the quantity of BTC to move is greater than the daily volume of the entire market, and (c) attempting a move of this size would probably devalue BTC significantly. You have a value, but there's no way that can be its value currently, because you'd have to spread the transactions out over time -- making the value a different number.

If someone owned $5 trillion of gold, do you think they'd be able to successfully move it all for $5 trillion? That's why the value is meaningless. You're talking about an exorbitant figure of money which the BitCoin market can't support.

[beala]

No, I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not using the spot price. I'm using the values that people are actually selling for. If you put in a sell order with a minimum price of something like $0.60, the orders would go through immediately, and you'd get $5600 in your Mt. Gox account. Once again, you've failed to actually fact check your post. The daily volume of Mt. Gox is routinely 10,000-15,000. Yes, you would bring the price down about $0.10 in a matter of minutes and possibly trigger a sell off, but that wouldn't make a difference to you if you just wanted your $5600.

EDIT: Here's the actual spreadsheet if you'd like to double check my work: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AomGTgVWFh3WdDAxQ01...

Here's where I got the data on mygox: http://mtgox.com/trade/history

[jedsmith]

It's amusing how you went from "you're misunderstanding me," admitting that there might have been a mistake, to "you failed to fact check". I'm willing to admit that I'm wrong, be educated by others, and learn from my mistakes because it does appear that I misunderstood you; when you're an abrasive shit, though, I'm not really inclined to give you the time of day. I gave you one pass to communicate like a reasonable human being, because you're obviously aware of interesting information that I'd like to know, but you are now a waste of my time.

I'm really tired of bending over backwards to be nice to people on HN. A few threads of arrogant snark like this in the last 24 hours, and I'm really stretching thin on patience. Now I see what the long-term users are on about.

[beala]

Point taken, jed smith. I do apologize for being so abrasive. I hope this doesn't turn you off from hacker news, as your patience is something I could afford to learn more about.

[erikpukinskis]

That's like saying anyone can wire $250,000 to their friend and have them wire it back.

Sure, some people could do that for fun. But I don't have that kind of cash. Do you?

[kiba]

That's like saying anyone can wire $250,000 to their friend and have them wire it back.

But wiring money is so easy that it's not very special at all. Beside, the economy will experience massive price inflation if it was dumped on the market.