Bitcoin Forum

Do you understand that it's impossible for everyone to win?

Speculation of bitcoins is just a way for people to steal from each other...  there will always be losers and winners, it is not much different from gambling

people put their money together and whoever exchanges his bitcoins at the right time will make a profit (and someone will have to take the equal loss)

whereas exchanges like mt.gox will continue to make profit either way

I know this is very basic but after reading this forum I am not sure if everyone understand this

so it's impossible for everyone to benefit, my guess is that numbers are close to 25-30% of people stealing from the rest (or making profit) similar to Forex

While at first glance this seems right, I am not sure it is.

In a closed system yes, but if more people are finding out about bitcoin and bringing more money into bitcoin than maybe not.

Well, yeah, that's like it, though "to steal from each other" is out of the order.. nobody is forcing me to trade or anyone else, so it's pretty much like any business - the better one, the stronger one, the luckiest one make most, some other less, some other lose.

If you don't want to trade and "steal" from others or don't want to risk to be "robbed" by others you can still buy and keep your coins to use it as purchasing power now or in the future.

If you don't want neither of these, then you're on the wrong place..

OP okay you can be the person who subsidizes everyone else? Sounds good to me.

lol

Day traders that suck will lose money and subsidize everyone holding bitcoins.

but what is the whole point of this forum? Everyone who wants to speculate in bitcoins should see other speculators as enemies, your job is to be smarter than the rest... and now people are "collaborating" in this forum, when in fact they are competitors, the only function this forum serves is to spread wrong information so someone can profit

So it's just like real life.

Thanks for the enlightening message OP

And unlike gambling you can affect the odds.

Give up. To hell with the odds. I'm keeping at this. I'll become a motherfuckingmastertrader, if that's what it takes.

You have a brain. Use it.

Just as a matter of curiosity, in what arena do you see it as possible for every participant to win?

Speculation is about where people think prices will go. Speculators can benefit from working together since the masses (majority of people trading) probably don't partake in this type of speculating.

It's not really "stealing" it's learning how to trade.

"Oh I'm so sorry I won the soccer game and stole your team's victory."

You get the point.

because everyone in life wins at everything correct?
people lose on stocks, companies, contracts, scams, currency devaluation, prices of anything going down (houses, land, art whatever)
it is possibly for everyone to BENEFIT if 1) noone steals coins 2) noone ever sells/trades their coins when they are getting less value than they put into it
welcome to life?

So since every coin I hold can be considered profit, by not cashing out I'm continuously making someone else lose, and will continue to do so until I do cash out?  How can that be?

I'll tell you... the real losers are going to be those who stick with fiat until it is too late.

only if you are the exchanger or mining bitcoins your self.... if you are holding bitcoins their number is not increasing, if you have 100 bitcoins now, you will have 100 after 10 years, where will be your profit then? the only profit you can make is to take money away from other people at the right time...

Yes.  One of these days there will be an exponential spike in the exchange rate that won't crash back down...

Actually wait... isn't it demand that drives up price? The more people that want BTC the more scarce it becomes. The more scarce it becomes the more it is worth. No actual money is lost in this respect. Technically speaking everyone can win as long as the price keeps rising. People lose money by selling when the price goes lower than what they paid for.

You are right, I'm agaisnt the markets, but it's like gambling, people keep playing games with a casino edge of more than 1%. So, fools deserve lose.




Investing, not speculating. If everybody buy, and nobody sell, then we increase the value. Everybody wins, no sells, no market, no exchange, pure WIN/WIN for everybody.

that is the definition of Ponzi scheme

I hope you can realize what paradox that sentence is when you read it again.

and how is this better than a Ponzi scheme?

Bitcoin is designed as a currency, you can already buy with it, sell for it, work for it, employ for it... not really in masses yet but we're heading there...

will you buy it, sell it, will you work for it or adopt it in any way is just your problem, certainly not mine.

If you could buy bitcoin now for 5$ and know you would sell it for 200$ in the future you wouldn't give a flying one would someone lose or not in that period, what kind of scheme it is etc.. you are scared about it because of it's 140$ price and you don't have balls to do it :)

When everyone uses Bitcoin as their currency, we all win.

Oh wait...banks lose.

And big corporations.

And governments.

that is the definition of Ponzi scheme
[/quote]

No, it isn't.  But your understanding that it doesn't work is correct.

Still, I'd like to know - rather than by negative example - in what arena do you see it as possible for every participant to win?

it will never be possible for everyone to win. What bitcoins could theoretically do is to take away banks power, so that 99% of people would not be losing against banks, freedom from bank control, but at the same time, banks have their purpose and they will always exist, this is what history tells us and to believe otherwise is to believe in some kind of utopia

bitcoins have their purpose - money laundering and privacy, faster transactions and low fees, freedom from government control (although government is supposed to work for people, so that's another issue)


not losing is not the same as winning

What you just described is exactly what many in the BTC community would considered "winning".
Yes, making money is very nice, but that is not the end game for BTC.
"Winning" can mean very many different things to very many different people in regards to BTC.

My 2BTC

Mmmm.  So your thread title is somewhat... divergent?... from that expression, no?

In any case, all I can say is this:  if I ever found myself living in an actual Utopia I would devote my life to its utter destruction.  And yes - I always played Chaotic Good...

It doesn't matter.  You are not looking at a closed system.

It will only be a zero sum game if the exchange rate returns to its original value: 0.

Until that point (if it ever comes) we will have more winners than losers within bitcoin, and more losers than winnners in the fiat world.

Yes.  I think those that choose to purchase BTC early on will have more buying power later from the growth and desire for BTC, but it will not change the fact that BTC is valuable and useful just for what it is.  There will probably be a day when the price of BTC is saturated and does not fluctuate much, and there will probably be a great reward for those that invest early (There already is for those who bought a year ago) but there will be many people that will eventually need to use BTC and will use them with the sole desire of just having a way to transfer money quickly and without bank fees.  They will not see it as a ponzi scheme and it will still be very beneficial to them.

Technically everyone could win, but that is a statistical improbability to the point that it's impossible.  I thought I heard somewhere that a small % of BTC available is actually being used/traded.

It could very well be possible... Lets say all the people that sold during the crash were "old btc" who bought in at $1-10... They would have won...  The people that bought at the top could still be holding so they could in theory still win...

I am sorry but the point is pretty silly honestly.  Sure not everyone wins... Just like not everyone is an asshole or a nice person and not every piece of bacon is delicious... oh wait... every piece of bacon is delicious:)

In this world, 99% of everything has winners and losers to some degree.  Captain Obvious award I think should be awarded.

If a person sells a commodity, it was their choice to do so and they agreed to a price at that time

Maybe that price made the person "feel good" at that time, or something similar.  They must have had a reason -- if they had none, then they acted out of irrationality/ insanity and have proven they don't deserve to hold the commodity anyway.

The market is the aggregate of individuals' choices.  Some of them chose wisely; some of them not so much.

That's life; get over it and move on.  Just try to make better and better decisions-- that's the best we can all do.

Personally I find that the more time I spend worrying about any supposed injustice or whatever you want to call it (tragedy of the commons, perhaps?) in the "poor saps who lost out", the more time it takes away from my ability to hone my own shrewdness.

Welcome to the Age of Aquarius -- the era of Horus: Crowned & Conquering Child -- the era of Personal Finanacial Liberty (& Ultimate Individual Responsibility).  Embrace the change or perish.

Eventually someone must be left holding shiny rocks when everyone else cashes out of gold!
Fiat, gold, bitcoin, stocks, they're all just arbitrary imaginary units representing abilities and characteristics humans value.  Bitcoin has unique characteristics.

How about we make this post the last one here. It's really stupid and pointless thread (many are though but this one is special).

learn2gametheory and it'll seem less confusing/dumb.

and yes, i do think everyone realizes this, although when irrational bullish greed starts clouding this basic concept, it's usually a market top.

If the OP started mining on 03/01/2009, would he had made that post?
Late adopters whining.

In a few years there will be people whining that they did not buy in 2013.  It is just the nature of this.  However, people will sell out at different stages.  Eventually BTC will be more stable.  It will be a volatile ride for a while though.

I like to think about it like this: I'm buying hundreds of mBTC now while their cheap, and I'll be rich when an mBTC hits $266. ;)

Aren't you a little bit unfair ( fanatic?) on this one?

I've hardly found anything but stupid and pointless threads in the speculation subforum  ;D
At least, this post does not pretend that he can predict the future...

i just hold, i have strong hands. while day traders win/lose/have fun, i build my bitcoin related site and wait for a price over 1k$.
i'll have NOT a lot of fiat, but a lot of purchasing power in the bitcoin world.

Everyone is a late adopter when he adopts Bitcoin. I was a late adopter in Summer 2011. Do you hear me whining?  :P

I disagree.

If you're investing or speculating then you can't claim a benefit is your right - you're taking the risks, you deserve the ups and the downs.

As a transactional currency, many, many more will benefit from a cryptocurrency than they would with the old, slow, fallible way.

Therefore as Bitcoin's use in this way grows, the amount saved in credit card fees, wire transfers, chargebacks etc. is taken out of PayPal's or Visa's or a scammer's or your bank's pockets.

The existing financial organisations will be the biggest losers in this game. Much more so than any investors who fail to make a profit in a long-term bull market.

Now, doesn't that sound like everyone who matters benefits?

The 4000 year old bubble (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/21/136474556/are-we-in-a-gold-bubble).

Who won, who lost?  :)

Quote from Bitcoin wiki:
"Bitcoin has an expected win-win outcome. Early and present adopters profit from the rise in value as Bitcoins become better understood and in turn demanded by the public at large. All adopters benefit from the usefulness of a reliable and widely-accepted decentralized peer-to-peer currency."

Everybody wins that embraces it. What are you talking about?

win

If Bitcoin teaches the world that no money has 'intrinsic' value, and that the real wealth comes from our own productivity - then EVERYONE will benefit.

If you don't see that happening, just buy some bitcoins now and keep them safe.

Yeah, I've said many are stupid and pointless but this looks fundamentally pointless.

Another way to look at bitcoin is that people with excess fiat are continuously pooling it together in exchanges, but then only people that need fiat right now are withdrawing from the exchanges.  Those that don't need fiat also benefit in the knowledge that if they need fiat, they can get it by raiding their bitcoin "savings account" -- often at multiples of what they put into the account -- which gives them peace of mind.  So no, it's not a zero-sum game, there's more going on.

Only if you see Bitcoin as a zero sum game like forex, which it is not. Bitcoin is more like a real world economy, when the economy expands/grows, everyone benefits.

Those who lived by the Golden Rule: Those with the gold make the rules



The bagholders who missed the Bitcoin train at a time where you could still get some coins for gold.  ;D

The OP's premise is true.  It is impossible for everyone to benefit.  For each bit of value created in bitcoin, value is lost in fiat money.  USD being inflated by 85 billion per month ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesdorn/2012/12/27/ben-bernankes-qe4-another-step-toward-helicopter-money-and-away-from-freedom/ ) results in a direct loss in value of USD, that value can flow right into bitcoin.  Of course value doesn't move that smoothly and instantly and some of it is moving into real estate and some into stocks and some into gold and silver, but some of the value can certainly fit into bitcoin.

It is possible for everyone to benefit when a productive economy is built based on bitcoins.  It's also possible for everyone to benefit if they feel (but not actually are) wealthier.  A person with 1000 bitcoins today may feel flush with cash and spend more in their local economy.  Of course if everyone rushes for the exits at the same time then most people lose in the rush to find the Greater Fool.

And always remember, the house always wins.  In this case it's MtGox.  In the case of shares or forex it's your broker and local exchange.  In the case of poker it's the casino.  There are perpetual winners in all cases, just the number of losers varies.

Bitcoin can be a net positive on society because it is new technology, it makes new things possible/easier that were previously impossible or impractical. That doesn't mean "everybody" wins. Those who are heavily invested in the old system may lose. The horse-and-buggy industry lost big when cars were invented.

It's actually possible that everyone benefits: when governments print money out of thin air they can spend it's value without anybody losing anything right then. It's called seigniorage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage). Of course, there no free lunch and eventually someone will foot the bill, usually the people left holding the worthless money when the currency is debased or abolished.

Bitcoin tries to move that seigniorage profit in the hands of the early adopters. In theory the losers would be those left holding bitcoins in the far off future when bitcoins are superseded by a better wealth transfer system. In practice that future is much closer than most people expect.

Nonsense. As others have said, it is not a zero sum game. Now, fiat is so crappy that it is bound to lose out but that is not necessarily the case just because there is a new decentralised, fluid currency on the block. And of course, if you gamble with trading, you have a chance of losing but that is a choice that is made by the individual.

Those that don't understand the essence of free trade, which is individuals performing an exchange which enhances the value proposition of both, need to meditate on things a little more.

This.