Technical problems trigger panic sales on the Bitcoin market. The exchange rate sometimes loses more than half of its value. The Internet payment method is still considered an alternative to the euro. By Daniel Eckert
Electronic money from exchange tutorials
A cold shower for speculators, and what a shower. Investors who got into Bitcoins in the past few weeks are currently experiencing their first crash. On Wednesday evening, the price of the Internet currency briefly passed the 200 euro mark, and it has been falling rapidly since then. The prices fell to around 100 euros by Thursday afternoon – a loss of more than half within a few hours.
“It was probably inevitable that such a course correction had to come about,” says Oliver Flaskämper, head of the electronic trading platform Bitcoin.de. Many newcomers have recently not even dealt much with the idea and technology of digital money.
“Then it was all about the quick profit.” The many purchases would have resulted in rapid price increases, but this resulted in an increasing number of “shaky hands” in the market.
Product of a mysterious programmer
“Shaky hands”, that is how the late stock exchange master André Kostolany used to call speculators who sell their positions at the slightest setback and thus accelerate the downward trend. “The Bitcoin market has now had to experience that too,” says Flaskämper.
The world’s largest Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox explained the crash in a Facebook entry as follows: The trading system had failures because it could not cope with the influx of new users. The number of transactions tripled within 24 hours. The result was a panic reaction among some Bitcoin owners, which caused the price to collapse.
Bitcoins have been around since 2009. They go back …
