Looking at the actual charts presented in the article, I can't help but draw a very different conclusion: the spikes in Bitcoin-related HN posts do not <i>precede</i> BTC price increases, but instead they more or less mirror the price swings (as do most other relevant news sources).<p>It's deceiving, especially at the scales used, because it's easy to compare the peak of a price swing with the uptick in news stories (implying some kind of predictive power) when in reality, the upticks in stories are fairly proportional to the price changes leading up to the price peaks - it's just not as noticeable due to the difference in scales.<p>As with other markets, a trading strategy based on public news is - for any normal trader - a losing strategy. The people who <i>are</i> able to make gains based on news in other markets often have to pay a premium to colocate servers at or near the exchange's servers, and a trade delayed by more than a few milliseconds will have lost any potential upside in the market's reaction to the news. You can bet on the same thing happening with Bitcoin (and the decentralized nature of Bitcoin doesn't change the requirement to be located near the exchanges' servers since these trades all happen outside the blockchain - i.e., on traditional servers).
We are past bubble stage with Bitcoin IMO. It has failed to become much other than a bullshit investment vehicle. People only worried about how high it can go, instead of actually using it daily.
This is just when there's tech news on Bitcoin. If you want to get ready for bubbles just keep an eye on google trends "how to buy bitcoin". Worked for me, admittedly only once though.
the post could have had a lot more value if it compared against other news outlets to see if HN has its own independent trends or it just plain and simple follows media trends.
From TFA: "You might have got the imperssion that there are a lot of Bitcoin-related posts on Hacker News lately."<p>A typo in the first sentence means to me that quality control on form, and possibly content, was neglected when writing this post.
I read somewhere that bitcoin was deemed a pyramid scheme. Not sure about that, but doesn't it get more and more expensive to do transactions as more and more people use it? Is there a limit to unique sigs people could use?
This 'researcher' has no control group. There's more interest in a financial asset when the price of that asset (or asset class) is increasing sharply. That's all there is to it.