The Bubbly Bitcoin Thread -- Merged Threads

[NJT123]

Bitcoin to work as a currency has to become stable, yes.

If you dont want to be involved whilst it achieves the value required for stability ($100,000 per coin?) then that is your loss.

0.000'000'10

When that can buy you a beer or a click of the mouse on a pr0n website (my god why dont they do this!!), then people will use it as a currency rather than a store of wealth.

[Eddie_George]

23 minutes ago, adarmo said:

Thanks for the headline I couldn't get to the article with the URL.

I agree that there is limited industrial consumption but I was just driving a wedge between your comparison. I don't believe they are comparable and I don't invest in gold because it doesn't generate a return. It's a store of wealth, like government bonds or cash. I don't invest in those either, I only hold some cash since I need it to cover shot term needs but longer term I'm invested in yield generating investments (not Property I should clarity before the HPC lynch mob come running).

There is no intrinsic value with BitCoin. If Warren Buffet comes out and says he was wrong on earlier investments it's because he underestimated the ability for them to succeed on the scale they've done. He has however invested in tech stocks. He's a value investor and will buy things if they're good value. Since there's no intrinsic value in BitCoin it can never be god value (unless buy buying a BitCoin you could buy other stuff more cheaply). 

Buying a BitCoin is not buying a share and gives you no ownership of anything other than an imaginary number. 

The more I learn and talk to people about it the stronger my opinion. It's gambling. It's an online Casino with a couple of functions.

People who are buying it are not buying it to store wealth they're buying it because they think it'll keep going up in price. That's a speculative bubble right there. 

I think it's wrong to compare Bitcoin to other investments, it's a new asset class.

If people were able to invest directly in the internet when it was conceived, many would be obscenely rich. Unfortunately you couldn't, but the way Bitcoin works means that you can invest in the internet of money.

Bitcoins are not shares as such, but what they lack in dividend they make up for in holding their value against fiat currencies and they cannot be diluted unless the users reach consensus that they should be.

Bitcoins have value because they're scarce and this is enforced by the software -- holders know this and this scarcity cannot be tampered with without their say-so.

It's just the same as gold, opals, or diamonds. Many Boomer goldbugs cannot comprehend that something they cannot hold in their hand has value, it's quite amusing.

I think it would be foolish not to buy some bitcoin given its promise. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Not only does it give you a chance of making some money, you're crowdfunding the demise of the parasitic banks.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Eddie_George

[Eddie_George]

 

[tomandlu]

4 hours ago, Eddie_George said:

I think it would be foolish not to buy some bitcoin given its promise. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. Not only does it give you a chance of making some money, you're crowdfunding the demise of the parasitic banks.

"some money" - if cap estimates are right, anyone holding four or more coins would become a millionaire. That sounds like exchanging one set of parasites for another.

I remain unconvinced (although the blockchain is an extraordinary creation). It would be interesting to know, for example, what percentage of bitcoins have actually been traded in the last two years, and what percentage have sat in a wallet.

[Jonesy74]

On 26/10/2017 at 8:06 AM, tomandlu said:

What would a graph look like charting pizza costs in bitcoin over the past few years? How is that not deflationary?

That’s just a strengthening of the currency (and I agree probably bubbly at current valuations). But the number of bitcoin available is increasing every 10 minutes. Isn’t that actually inflation at the moment?

[Darby Ram]

6 hours ago, adarmo said:

Thanks for the headline I couldn't get to the article with the URL.

I agree that there is limited industrial consumption but I was just driving a wedge between your comparison. I don't believe they are comparable and I don't invest in gold because it doesn't generate a return. It's a store of wealth, like government bonds or cash. I don't invest in those either, I only hold some cash since I need it to cover shot term needs but longer term I'm invested in yield generating investments (not Property I should clarity before the HPC lynch mob come running).

There is no intrinsic value with BitCoin. If Warren Buffet comes out and says he was wrong on earlier investments it's because he underestimated the ability for them to succeed on the scale they've done. He has however invested in tech stocks. He's a value investor and will buy things if they're good value. Since there's no intrinsic value in BitCoin it can never be god value (unless buy buying a BitCoin you could buy other stuff more cheaply). 

Buying a BitCoin is not buying a share and gives you no ownership of anything other than an imaginary number. 

The more I learn and talk to people about it the stronger my opinion. It's gambling. It's an online Casino with a couple of functions.

People who are buying it are not buying it to store wealth they're buying it because they think it'll keep going up in price. That's a speculative bubble right there. 

The difference between gold and Bitcoin is that owning gold doesn't gain you access to the "gold network". But to access the Bitcoin network, you must pay with Bitcoin. That's the value proposition of Bitcoin. Now, if an immutable, censorship-resistant distributed ledger has uses - and I believe that it will - then Bitcoin has value.

This may be easier to understand with something like Ethereum, where the proposal is to switch to a "proof-of-stake" mechanism, rather than mining, to secure the network. In that model, owners of Ether can stake their tokens as security and earn fees for doing so. So if the network (ie, a distributed, global computer running on the EVM) is useful, then the tokens will have value.

If you want to know more, then google the phrase "fat protocols".

It's silly, at this point, to describe crypto as tulips when there is a huge amount of technical progress being made, alongside a lot of scammy behaviour. You only read about the latter in, say, the FT because, frankly, their journalists don't have the time or the technical chops to keep up with the field. You are right that most people who invest in crypto know close to zero about finance/investing. That's in part why it has been so profitable; but it's clearly also something that has changed drastically in the last 18 months, with greater VC involvement. I suspect also that a lot of traders have gravitated towards unregulated markets in search of mugs (that and the terrible platforms mean that trading is a very, very bad idea in crypto).  

 

[tomandlu]

5 hours ago, dannyf said:

That’s just a strengthening of the currency (and I agree probably bubbly at current valuations). But the number of bitcoin available is increasing every 10 minutes. Isn’t that actually inflation at the moment?

Not if the amount people want is growing at a greater rate. Inflation and deflation move with value not quantity. I mean, I can't be certain, but I don't think you can reasonably describe the current price movement of bitcoin as 'inflationary'.

Besides, the numbers may be increasing, but there is an upper limit and mining is getting harder and harder.

[adarmo]

5 hours ago, Darby Ram said:

The difference between gold and Bitcoin is that owning gold doesn't gain you access to the "gold network". But to access the Bitcoin network, you must pay with Bitcoin. That's the value proposition of Bitcoin. Now, if an immutable, censorship-resistant distributed ledger has uses - and I believe that it will - then Bitcoin has value.

This may be easier to understand with something like Ethereum, where the proposal is to switch to a "proof-of-stake" mechanism, rather than mining, to secure the network. In that model, owners of Ether can stake their tokens as security and earn fees for doing so. So if the network (ie, a distributed, global computer running on the EVM) is useful, then the tokens will have value.

If you want to know more, then google the phrase "fat protocols".

It's silly, at this point, to describe crypto as tulips when there is a huge amount of technical progress being made, alongside a lot of scammy behaviour. You only read about the latter in, say, the FT because, frankly, their journalists don't have the time or the technical chops to keep up with the field. You are right that most people who invest in crypto know close to zero about finance/investing. That's in part why it has been so profitable; but it's clearly also something that has changed drastically in the last 18 months, with greater VC involvement. I suspect also that a lot of traders have gravitated towards unregulated markets in search of mugs (that and the terrible platforms mean that trading is a very, very bad idea in crypto).  

 

Thanks DR. This is the first exchange I've had with anyone on BitCoin that's been worthwhile. 

[guest_northshore]

7 hours ago, tomandlu said:

"some money" - if cap estimates are right, anyone holding four or more coins would become a millionaire. That sounds like exchanging one set of parasites for another...

Pretty much. I've been in/out various cryptos for years, but in current iterations I don't pretend they represent anything except my own greed and punt on others' greed.

It's hilarious to read critics of land-hoarding actually extoling any mutual virtue to money/asset-hoarding.

[goldbug9999]

17 hours ago, Darby Ram said:

This may be easier to understand with something like Ethereum, where the proposal is to switch to a "proof-of-stake" mechanism, rather than mining, to secure the network. In that model, owners of Ether can stake their tokens as security and earn fees for doing so. So if the network (ie, a distributed, global computer running on the EVM) is useful, then the tokens will have value.

I just dont get POS, it introduces a positive feedback loop - the more you have the more you can mine,  the endgame of which s the network being controlled by one holder - the current largest holder of etherium would eventually be able to collar almost all the newly mined coins.

[goldbug9999]

11 hours ago, guest_northshore said:

It's hilarious to read critics of land-hoarding actually extoling any mutual virtue to money/asset-hoarding.

You need x amount of land to do a certain thing with it e.g. build a house and that amount of x does not change much over time,  thus if you hoard land your preventing someone else from doing x. With bitcoin (or any deflationary currency) you need less of it to do x over time. Also involvement in bitcoin is optional, involvement in land is generally not.

[guest_northshore]

10 minutes ago, goldbug9999 said:

You need x amount of land to do a certain thing with it e.g. build a house and that amount of x does not change much over time,  thus if you hoard land your preventing someone else from doing x. With bitcoin (or any deflationary currency) you need less of it to do x over time. Also involvement in bitcoin is optional, involvement in land is generally not.

Optional - I know I said it previously. That doesn't lessen the hypocrisy in professing any mutual benefit of any one crypto. Such views annoy me because the blinkered price perspective holds back what these technologies could achieve - individually, bilaterally, collectively. Particularly in undermining some long-standing and asymmetric power structures that generally involve an authority/rentseeker boot on our faces.

Each to their own, but the buy-now hoarding garbage still grates. It's not something I'll lie about, or partake in. Whatever my own monetary interest. And particulary on this forum.

[jiltedjen]

some mindless brain fart:

bitcoin can eventually remove the power to create money from private banks.

Although i benefit a lot from bitcoin hoarding, i'm not great that to obtain it you just have to buy earlier than the next guy, its not that fair really. 

but the real gift bitcoin has is the best hard money ever created, its even harder than gold. It's pretty horrible that not everyone can be rich, but its much nicer than the current system, where everyone works for the banks and wastes 20 years of their lives for 400% over-valued housing stock (where nearly everyone is poor)

in the bitcoin world things will be worth what they are worth. 1 house will be worth 1 house, it wont be bid up with fake money, so you have to pay way over the odds unfairly. Therefore although not perfect morally regarding fairness, i think we can all agree that taking the power away from the banks actually is the best gift we can give ourselves and our children. A gift of 20 or 30 years saved, you can buy a house for what a house is worth.

the big fiat 'worthless' money experiment is coming to and end. Bitcoin may take 20 or 50 years but its a new dawn for the next 100 years.

all prices for goods and services will drop steady over time, requiring less and less bitcoin to purchase. But the way wages are sorted would have to change also, you couldn't just be on say 100,000 satoshis a year, your wage would be closer tied to the value stream of the company you work for, so your wage would be say 2% of a company value stream saved pot each year. a much fairer system that the crappy below inflation raises companies try (and do) to get away with. No more making the 1% super rich and the poor progressively poorer.

all savings would get more valuable, zombie business would die very quickly as they couldn't keep taking on debt at near 0%, new entrants would enter the market, and new companies would thrive, land would be much cheaper, allowing new shops to open. 

[jiltedjen]

11 minutes ago, guest_northshore said:

That doesn't lessen the hypocrisy in professing any mutual benefit of any one crypto.

for it to work we need it to grow, need one coin to take the lead for 20-30 years. for mass adoption.

all the alts are just stumbling blocks which one day may serve a positive purpose, but for now just undermine bitcoin. If bitcoin fails due to extreme value dilution to hundreds of alts, then all crypo dies. 

hence all alts are an attack on the whole industry. 

Edited October 28, 2017 by jiltedjen

[guest_northshore]

7 minutes ago, jiltedjen said:

for it to work we need it to grow, need one coin to take the lead for 20-30 years. for mass adoption.

all the alts are just stumbling blocks which one day may serve a positive purpose, but for now just undermine bitcoin. If bitcoin fails due to extreme value dilution to hundreds of alts, then all crypo dies. 

hence all alts are an attack on the whole industry. 

Bitcoin vs alts - I have no preference but experimentation is the main strength and appeal to me.

I have no problem with anyone just saying they like crypto because it's making them rich, or they hope it will. But if for example I told a friend they don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin (or whatever), they can just buy a fraction for future riches and/or empowerment - from me or another already holder - I'd expect to be punched in the face.

[doomed]

2 minutes ago, guest_northshore said:

Bitcoin vs alts - I have no preference but experimentation is the main strength and appeal to me.

I have no problem with anyone just saying they like crypto because it's making them rich, or they hope it will. But if for example I told a friend they don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin (or whatever), they can just buy a fraction for future riches and/or empowerment - from me or another already holder - I'd expect to be punched in the face.

Are you a socialist by any chance? As the chain becomes more established and use cases grow risk is reduced. The profit early adopters make is for the risk they took on.

[jiltedjen]

15 minutes ago, guest_northshore said:

Bitcoin vs alts - I have no preference but experimentation is the main strength and appeal to me.

I have no problem with anyone just saying they like crypto because it's making them rich, or they hope it will. But if for example I told a friend they don't need to buy a whole Bitcoin (or whatever), they can just buy a fraction for future riches and/or empowerment - from me or another already holder - I'd expect to be punched in the face.

why?

i had this exact convocation with someone at work the other day. I told them it was very very risky as basically like gambling, i said they could buy a fraction. Buy and hold. expect that you have lost the money as soon as you have bought it, (the right attitude withs something so risky). then told them how to store it securely. and then said don't bother checking it for 10 years. it will either go to nothing or make you rich. But i said the main draw is that your spending 20 years of your life paying a mortgage on something you should never have to, due to the evil banks.

So whats so wrong with putting a small punt on bitcoin in the hope that:

1. it frees you from the wrong extra years your working for the greedy banks
2. you become rich

He didn't punch me in the face, in fact he was very happy with my sage advise. It's not like im some rotting old single income boomer (5 bed house) telling hard working kids to stop buying i-phones is it? which happens daily, and i never punch anyone. 

at the end of the day we are all slaves to the banks. £100-£200 is a cheap punt for some bitcoin. it's a bet. But in the gambling game of life your already 100% set to loose (pointless lost years) so why not make a tiny bet, that maybe... just maybe you have a chance to free yourself?

the average working man will never be rich. Its a small punt that you may be. 

i help others by helping myself. It's true honest capitalism (rock solid foundations) something i don't think we have ever seen. 

Edited October 28, 2017 by jiltedjen

[guest_northshore]

17 minutes ago, doomed said:

Are you a socialist by any chance? As the chain becomes more established and use cases grow risk is reduced. The profit early adopters make is for the risk they took on.

wtf does this have to do with socialism? But no my ideals are somewhere in the mix of classical liberal/georgist/anarchist.

[adamLancs]

A lot of people still think of tulips and pyramid schemes when they hear of Bitcoin. They might have warmed to the idea but are still wary of losing money. The genesis block was mined in January 2009 which means it will soon be 9 years old, that's pretty good for a pyramid scheme. Coinbase has 12 million users and that's from all over the world. A drop in the ocean. If somebody asks me about Bitcoin I tell them to buy at least a little at regular intervals, and the ones that listened are all quids in now... nobody wanted to hit me yet. (Was that serious?)

[guest_northshore]

27 minutes ago, jiltedjen said:

why? ...

There's nothing wrong with a punt - small or large. It's just not something I'd suggest to a friend in the same breath as advocating any gain to them > gain to me.

I don't agree on your Bitcoin vs alts perspective. When I started with BTC was trading in/out of Litecoin, Terracoin, PPCoin, Devcoin, Namecoin. They were about the only alts with liquidity & volume at the time - vircurex, btce, mcxnow and other exchanges now mostly defunct. What really set the alts off was Shakezula's cloning guides (guy on bct - but if it hadn't been him it would have been someone else). Given where activity and prices are today I think it's quite likely this has catalysed more interest/greed in cryptos inc Bitcoin. Bolstered, not attacked.

 

[doomed]

2 hours ago, guest_northshore said:

wtf does this have to do with socialism? But no my ideals are somewhere in the mix of classical liberal/georgist/anarchist.

Sorry your post just sounded like a typical lefty rant about how disgusting it is that somebody is making a profit. 

[goldbug9999]

It seems that the way bitcoin and other cryptos are distributed is a point of contention and I understand the arguments for and against the bounty for getting in early. As far as I know though none of the alts have come up with a better way than the bitcoin strategy of POW mining and selling on a market. Indeed a good many alts actually do their initial distribution using the existing bitcoin distribution (hard forks and air drops). 

The only alternative to distributing according to some resource I can think of is using identity but that the problem is giving the crypto network access to some unforgeable proof of identity which would be dependent on some government based service.

[guest_northshore]

3 hours ago, doomed said:

Sorry your post just sounded like a typical lefty rant about how disgusting it is that somebody is making a profit. 

Perhaps it's a righty rant about how ironic it is that libertarians would collectively converge on one new monetary protocol.

[markyh]

On ‎10‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 9:40 AM, big_piggy said:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0

It was actually 10,000  BTC. A $60 million dollar pizza only 7 years ago. 

I'm not sure everyone is thinking that bitcoin is only store of wealth. The market prices it in already somewhat; but people aren't rational and do not behave so. Sure the people that have got in early have identified it's intrinsic value, a lot of people are definitely buying it because they think it could be the currency of the future. But how many people have phoned up their brokers and asked to get into bitcoin because they've heard it on the news? How many people have just seen that it's up how many % and thought I cannot miss this? Bitcoin on the news, I'll put 100£ into it... Go onto communities like reddit bitcoin and see all these pictures of coffee shops opening that accept bitcoins and how they get all excited that it's already becoming adopted as a currency makes me laugh. It's a complete delusion that these places actually take in any bitcoin, and if they actually do the people buying it and exchanging it for anything are total total idiots, and these are the people that adopt it.

Surely, what I'm trying to say is that the only reason people want to take in bitcoin because it's a surefire way to make big money, and they are all desperate to find those idiots out there that part with bitcoin before they do. Who's got the biggest balls to ride it to the moon. That house for sale in central London for bitcoin? Great, lets get 10£million in bitcoin and get rich fast- lets double our money. It's not about the intrinsic value of bitcoin, it's about the rising value of its intrinsic value through this price discovery period. Speculation through and through surely?

If it is truly deflationary and store of wealth, I cannot wrap my head around that it'll only go in one direction, going up, or going down.  It's only really been up ever since it's creation because people believe that the underlying intrinsic invention is still undervalued and in the back of their heads they think there are more people to buy into it, and it could still go to the moon yet I have no doubt. You may talk about its recent and historical dips throughout it's history, but to me people are just reacting to the knowledge that a sell-off is coming on the back of bad news and the big players are in the game to sell high, buy low. Volatility makes alot of money for the big players, they would love it. A 20% sell-off is like Christmas. There hasn't been a collective moment of disbelief yet, but at some point it's going to find a point where people truly reflect about it's intrinsic value and that will be an interesting moment to witness.  When the market collectively realises that after this journey of how many years, perhaps it's overvalued, then it would become a  dead race to whoever can sell the fastest,  can you imagine how much damage a drop of 25%  @ 50k would do not for the traders, but for the currency aspect of it? It's not much good as a currency if the value of the currency can destroy itself that much whilst having a crisis of faith. Why would anyone accept bitcoin if it's going downnn? 

Perhaps it's just growing pains because it's young, if bitcoin can stabilise itself then maybe yes it can be a useable currency but I'm not sure why it would ever be stable. It's volatile, people have become fantastically rich off it being volatile. 

Also if bitcoin was to become this libertarian world currency societal change thing, the inequality of wealth would be staggering. You'd have easily the world's first trillionnaires, it's simply bizarre that people would roll down onto their bellies and accept this new world order of bitcoin (but perhaps they'd have to?). The future going forth needs strong state powers, to deal with the global problems like climate change, societal change, nuclear disarmament blah blah blah,  so I don't know more than anyone else but I don't see it just yet. But Satoshi would certainly be the richest man in history. I just don't get it and would love to see the other side. There surely should be some good economic type papers out there?

uh huh. I could find the same article in 2013 when it jumped from under $100 to over  $1100 in December 2013. Then the 1st China "ban" and big exchange collapses and closing down of SilkRoad, price had dropped to $450 by May 2014, when I stopped my mining and Parked my 5.3BTC.  Then it carried on dropping until Jan 2015 when it reached just over $200. So there is your end of the world 80% drop, in only 13 months. Exactly the same thing happened in the run up from 2009  $0.1 to 2011 $100 but bigger, I think a 90%+ drop.  What happened in between the drops?  Slow adoption. From Jan 2015 to Mid 2016 the price remained in the $200-$400 range slowly increasing as adaption grew. Then adoption started to get more mainstream again and we got back to $1000 quite easily. Then the hype stage, the third to now, but with ever greater adoption and use. 

So it may happen again, my guess is $8000 by this Christmas then a 85% bust to $1200 by Jan 2019, an 85% drop. Then it will begin again. $1000-$2000 stable price for 2019-2020, more adoption, then another 40 x rise from $2000 to $80,000. then an 80% drop again. 

I will still have my 5.3BTC, until I am allowed to direct pay off the mortgage with it, which will happen (already can in Japan), but when this happens BTC will be $500,000+  and I will happily pay 0.5BTC to clear my mortgage and retire early on my worthless £ Fiat pension and my 5 BTC. But then it will be worth not being involved in HODL anymore as I can walk into  Tesla or one of the other 5 remaining Electric car brands and by the latest midrange model for 0.05 BTC. 

 

 

[markyh]

On ‎10‎/‎26‎/‎2017 at 1:10 PM, goldbug9999 said:

The exponential growth cant continue definitely I'm guessing bitcoin cap will grow to somewhere around $5-10 trillion at which point growth starts to tail off - i.e. the same order of magnitude as gold.

But how much more would Gold (and worse, Silver!) be worth in $ usd if all its physical existence and future mining was held on a central Blockchain?  So everyone know where is was (but not who owns it) and Banks couldn't sell Paper Gold without physical proof of being linked to the ledger. My guess is GOLD would now be $20000 oz and Silver $1000.