Amid what has become a commonplace price fluctuation for Bitcoin, there is perhaps little cause for celebration – but long-term, it’s a different story, according to Reddit.
To those preparing to sell over the past 24 hours, the sudden drop in BTC price will have come as a frustrating disappointment. As CoinDesk reports, the USD trading price dropped like a stone yesterday, going from $616 to a low of around $568 in a matter of several hours.
The fluctuations are broadly assumed to be linked with news that the US government is about to sell off 30,000BTC confiscated from Silk Road in a private auction, but exact reasons for the sharp decline remain theoretical.
One Reddit user suggested it was in fact a manifestation of community behavior.
“I'd personally considered making a trading bot that would monitor for any movements of the FBI-seized bitcoins, thinking that it might be a good idea to automatically sell off a bunch before they started to flow into exchanges all at once (potentially abruptly lowering the price),” u/PaulCapestany wrote earlier.
“I have to wonder if other people had similar ideas and followed through, causing the dip from $630 → $550, and only started turning the bots off/reversing course after seeing that the coins had been moved in order to be put into private auction?”
The theory proved popular among users, and while u/PaulCapestany notes that no data was available to back it up, the idea of an in-built panic mechanism tracking BTC prices is hardly surprising.
Nonetheless, unlike other recent ‘surprises’ such as the second Ghash.io 51% threat, which sent the community into panic mode, sentiment surrounding long-term implications of the sell-off, due to take place on June 27, is visibly more positive.
Look who’s selling
And indeed, it is not all about the price. Even community experts told Cointelegraph in a survey that there is little reason to fear a long-term downward trend this year. What is interesting, however, is the nature of the sell-off itself, for as Reddit user u/McFoxx was quick to highlight, it provides bidders “a unique opportunity to say, ‘Hey man, I got these right from the government!’”
While the results of the auction will produce two weeks of speculation, the government’s devotion of energy into selling the coins is in itself notable.
“...The mere fact that a sale is happening in the first place projects the message to the general public that the US government believes not only is Bitcoin a "real" thing, but has a value that they want to recoup by actually conducting a sale,” reads another popular Reddit post by u/d4d5c4e5.
Regardless of intentions, however, what is clear is that neither parties inside nor outside the community have shown any reason to doubt the firm foundations Bitcoin has built upon over the course of this year.