Bitcoin Forum

I cannot stop laughing.

I reckon a major crash on the S&P might be good for bitcoin however. It might make institutions look for alternative investments that might also rush bitcoin ETF applications to quick approval.

https://248qms3nhmvl15d4ne1i4pxl-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Tom-Lee-760x400.png

Wall Street Strategist Tom Lee Predicts S&P Rally in 2019

Read the article https://www.ccn.com/wall-street-strategist-tom-lee-predicts-sp-rally-in-2019/

Don't forget, this is Tom Lee's bread and butter. He made a name for himself as a Wall Street equity analyst. That's the only reason he's a talking head on CNBC today. So I give a little more pause when he makes predictions about the S&P 500. I don't think he's automatically a contrarian indicator here.

Actually, I agree with him.

Tom Lee should go be an Uber driver, he killed his reputation with idiotic predictions. If bitcoin doesn't cross 6 figures in a couple years, Mcafee and Draper will join him as crypto analyst clowns.

McAfee sure, but Draper gets slack no matter what. He only ever made one prediction: $10K by 2017. He made that prediction in 2014 in the middle of the dump from $1,200 to $150. That was pretty damn impressive. Worst comes to worst, he'll be 1 for 2. Not bad in the world of random price predictions, really.

Tom Lee loves these big headline news type of talks. He is known for making wrong predictions after wrong predictions and if you look at what he imagined bitcoin would be by the end of 2018 you can see how he has NO CLUE about market at all. The most recent I remember was bitcoin going to 15 thousand dollars each whereas we ended up with 3-4 thousand dollars each instead. That is about 300% off from the truth.

Yeah, american stock market did dropped a lot and not looking like its recovering as quickly as people imagined but really Tom Lee is not the guy you should be getting your information at all. I understand people share his news because its hilarious and we all love to point fingers and laugh at a clown but really all it does is to create a fame for someone who doesn't deserve a single second of it.

Can you give even a single plausible reason why it might?

Truth be told, I hope you turn out to be right (if it comes to that), but if your train of thought is anywhere close to what I think it is, then there's a lot of ifs and buts in respect to your reasoning. Basically, you may think that if the American stock market continues to spiral down in ever widening circles, with the economy stagnating in recession, people will be looking for safe havens (the point with which I agree) and one such safe haven will be Bitcoin (the point which I doubt). So what are your convincing reasons as to why that might be true indeed?

Tim Draper puts his money where his mouth is, plus he is actively contributing to make Bitcoin become more widely known and accepted. His latest investment in OpenNode is a great example of that, where it will utilize Bitcoin's Lightning Network and compete with shitty services as BitPay. That's why I find it funny that Tone Vays wants him out before the market can finally bottom, lol. Idiot.

Tom Lee and McAfee are nothing more than fools, that I can agree with. Both have done nothing for this space other than providing nonsense analysis in case of Tom Lee, and in case of McAfee it's promoting scam ICO's that people lost a lot of money with.

The funny thing with Tom Lee is that his legacy market analysis was fairly decent up to a certain point, but it became shit the moment the stock market started correcting.  :D

seriously? good luck with that one, tone. draper went balls deep into bitcoin right in the face of the 2014 bear market. his mindset is completely long term; he's not interested in getting rich quick (he's already rich). guys like that won't get shaken out easily, if ever.

tone is just being irrationally bearish. that's always been his way.

Draper endorsed two of the biggest ico flops of 2017, Bancor and Tezos. Anyone buying either because they trusted Draper's opinion and involvement most likely ended in terrible losses, so for that he lost a shit ton of credibility afaic. Now he says $250k by 2021, so if it doesn't happen he's in the same boat as Tom Lee and Mcafee as people not to listen to in my eyes.

I cannot give any plausible reason except that I am using Tom Lee's prediction on the S&P as a counter indicator basing it on his failed predictions on bitcoin last year. I also started the thread as another joke on Tom Lee hehehe.

Also, giving it more thought, stock market crashes have always caused investors to hold safer investments like gold and bonds. I am not certain if this will change and make all of them invest in bitcoin, however there are big investors who understand the technology enough to be confident on its potential. Those big investors might also be the reason why the ETF is a possibility.

but SEC has not been rejecting ETFs for nearly 2 years (maybe more) because of lack of interest to want to approve of them in case interest from "big investors" peaked! they were and still are rejecting ETFs based on same reasons such as the un-regulated state of bitcoin market, the high unrealistic volatility of it, the manipulation that exists in this market, and a lot more and none of those reasons are going to go away if S&P tanks!

It's clear by now that there is no way to please the SEC other than stop coming up with new ETF proposals. They don't want it. I can't blame them, it must be frightening for them to stimulate this industry.

It wouldn't surprise me if they completely ignore coin backed ETFs and solely allow empty cash settled ETFs doing nothing but functioning as price tracker. It's the safest option in many ways and it translates into less spot demand.

In terms of Tom Lee's prediction about the S&P, it is perfectly possible that it bounces back up. His crypto predictions are rubbish, but he's not a joke when it comes to traditional markets, so don't write him off yet on that front.

Are we talking about a stock market correction or a larger economic crash? I don't think it's possible to see a real crash in stocks (like 1929) without triggering a severe recession or depression. So it's an important question to keep in mind.

In an economic crash, all markets will generally suffer. Just look at 2008. Gold fell hard like everything else. It just didn't fall quite as hard as stocks.

Gold fell hard? What did I miss exactly?

Actually, it started to grow in 2008 with an all time high in 2012. In 2009 alone it rose like 25% with another 30% in 2010. And it kept on rising as long as the Fed had been running quantitative easings. And while we are at it, this is the exact reason why things cannot repeat what happened in 1929 and soon thereafter. If we still were on the gold standard in 2008, we would likely have seen a new Great Depression or even worse, but this is not possible with fiat money not tied up by or to anything (e.g. gold)

Tim Draper is a venture capitalist, so it's safe to assume that he pumped money into way more ICO's. If people bought into these ICO's just because Tim Draper has invested in them, they have only themselves to blame for in case they lost money. I like Draper too, a lot actually, but that doesn't mean I have to follow everything he does or invests in.

It doesn't matter who you are, there is nothing in the world that you can do or say to tempt me to invest in ICO's, even when there admittedly is potential for insane profits. I prefer to stick to Bitcoin, sound money. Nothing can offer me that.

And in case Tim Draper isn't right with his $250k prediction, which I honestly don't see happen this soon, then it's still fine.

No, its bull market began in 2001 and 2008 was a bearish/corrective year. Anyone can pull up a chart and see that, clear as day.

The discussion had nothing to do with the ATH several years after the financial crisis ended. It pertains to what happened during the financial crisis of 2008.

Between the high and low of 2008, gold fell 34% in value over a period when Bear Stearns and other huge banks collapsed and the government was engaging in bailouts.

Gold may have recovered sooner than stocks (the S&P 500 made one more lower low in early 2009) but you're ignoring the March-November downturn in the middle of the economic crisis.

You don't understand, Draper didn't actually participate in either ico. What happened was he got involved way early before either ico was held, and then when the actual icos were being held his name was plastered all over them for his belief and involvement in them. My bet is he was given a shit ton of free coins before either ico was held in exchange for his endorsement. That's the worst case, the best case is he got coins for a small fraction of what actual ico buyers paid. In both cases, neither pumped, they both raised outrageous amounts and have just bled down - in Tezos case ico participants were lied to and didn't get any tokens for a whole fucking year after the ico was held, instead of the Fall 2017 expectation.
Do some fucking research on these, Draper comes out stinking like a fucking swindler in both situations. He took no risks, used his reputation for his great call in 2015 for a 2017 $10k price to get people to buy these shitcoins and he shouldn't be given a free pass - his reputation and credibility are damaged to anyone watching. I wouldn't listen to a GD thing he ever said again, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

This is standard procedure. It's called a presale or a pre-ICO. Fundraisers want to maximize publicized investment numbers heading into the ICO, so they're willing to issue large blocks at a discount to private investors. I've also heard of companies scrapping ICO plans entirely because they received enough private investment from presales.

Taking tokens for endorsement is a bit murkier. You always have to wonder when you see "advisors" whether they're actually involved or are just being paid for marketing purposes. In some cases, I think advisors are intentionally misled about the nature of projects and the true intentions of the ICO creators.

Either way, what he did doesn't exactly seem out of line in this industry. I suppose nobody should be buying any ICO token just because Draper said he invested, anyway.

Did anyone force people to invest in these ICO's? Nope.

It's up to you to do basic level research, and to not invest in anything just because whatever well known entity owns a large chunk of it.

I value what Draper does for Bitcoin, and that's a whole lot more than what most of the so called Bitcoin maximalists have contributed to Bitcoin combined. He wants Bitcoin to do well, invests money into startups aiming to build on top of it, and that's something I value a lot. Whatever he ends up doing with shitcoins or ICO's is not my problem because that's not something I am interested in.

There's no coincidence that these were 2 of the biggest icos in history, and both were endorsed by Draper. They were both also complete fucking failures for anyone participating in them. Rationalize it any way you want, but Draper's credibility went down the toilet afaic. He's just another shady name in the shadiest market the world has ever known.

He used his name to profit off those who trusted him to be above the typical crypto slimeball. Many found out the hard way he's no different. End of story.
After the shit he pulled, and knowing that if crypto went to zero he would still be a billionaire, anybody listening to anything he has to say is a moron.

I was talking about the larger economic crashes that might last for 5 or more years. Also, it does not have to be only in America, there are other countries like Venezuela or Zimbabwe that have there economies agonizing or have agonized from hyperinflation. Holding bitcoin in these countries is a reasonable solution, I reckon, which also might make it a better investment outside of those countries.

Okay, I'm not going to boil over this point

But here's the gold price chart which you wanted for everyone to see and draw their own conclusions:

https://a.radikal.ru/a24/1901/27/3d80341d4721.png

Personally, I'm strongly inclined to think that this minor and short-lived correction with higher lows was mainly due to these banks selling out the contents of their gold vaults in an attempt to provide liquidity they so desperately needed back in the day. Well, maybe, it was not just banks alone as some governments might have been involved in this sell-off too, but that had nothing to do with gold falling in value on its own, which the chart clearly shows (and the fall was nowhere near 34%, just in case)

Gold had been rising prior to 2008 and continued to rise after 2008 till 2012

It depends on how you look at it. It's easy to say for an outsider that Bitcoin is a reasonable solution and/or hedge, which is true, but the majority of the people there can't do anything with Bitcoin.

You can't pay for your daily necessities with Bitcoin, which is what they actually need because they live from day to day not knowing what the next one will bring. News outlets have been fooling people about crypto adoption there.

If one local store accepts payments in Bitcoin, they directly refer to it as 'Venezuela Bitcoin adoption growing' where they add tons of gibberish to the story to spice things up. Not cool.

And here is the time period in question—during the 2008 financial crisis:
https://i.imgur.com/te2pAct.png

You also posted a line chart, at what looks like a monthly time frame. That means all price extremes (highs and lows) are omitted and only monthly closing prices are shown. Here is a more useful chart for our purposes:

https://i.imgur.com/rGuiHue.png

High: $1,032.35
Low: $681.75

= 33.96% decline in value


The 2008 crisis was relatively short-lived for stocks too (only a few months longer than gold's correction). It also ended with higher lows, followed by new all-time highs. That's totally irrelevant to the point at hand: the 2008 crisis saw both markets fall significantly in value. Rationalize it however you want, but that's what happened.


See above.


Why do you keep repeating that? The question is: "What was the effect of the 2008 financial crisis on the gold market?"

And you're responding with: "Gold was in a long term bull market." That doesn't answer the question, nor does it address what actually happened to gold prices during the last financial crisis (a 34% crash in value).

they just said he was an "investor" right? that shouldn't mean much at all. i understand that it might have made gullible investors feel better about dumping money in, but it really doesn't indicate any involvement whatsoever.

i assume every successful venture capitalist has made a boatload of failed investments anyway. most startups are destined to fail. draper isn't immune to that at all and no offering in this industry will be.

i do think he's a bit of a loon, one example being his obsession with breaking california into multiple states. so i never took him that seriously anyway.

What does this chart show exactly? What is it, futures or spot market, and whose fixing, to begin with?


I thought I explained it in my post. Did you read it?

Yes, gold was in a long term bull market, and there was no reason for it to crash due to loss of value. The part which you missed or chose to miss in my post was exactly about that. If someone or some entity dumped massive amounts of gold into the market at heavily discounted prices (as the gold market doesn't look very elastic to absorb so much gold in so little time span), you would get precisely this effect. So the correction was short lived or even one-off only probably due to liquidation of someone or something. Does that answer your question? Why are you so unhappy with it, really?

this person often makes predictions that make a scene in the community, but after he said about his predictions in 2018 I would never believe what he said again.

Physically settled daily futures (London gold market). Feel free to try and find HLOC data from another liquid gold market that looks any different. Daily futures and spot are very tightly correlated, but futures markets have much better historical data and are more liquid anyway.


LOL, the market dumped 34% over 9 months. It's ridiculous to claim this loss of value is due to temporary lack of market liquidity. It's much more logical to look at the significant global financial crisis and market contraction that was occurring at the time.


You're the one who starting arguing with me. All I said was that gold fell during the 2008 crash, just like everything else. You denied it, so I just gave you the facts.....

However, we should remember that these countries are Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Countries which are suffering or have suffered from hyperinflation. Their people might not use bitcoin as currency for daily necessities, but they can use it to store their wealth unless gold or the US dollar are easier to buy.

Initially, I thought it to also be true about Bitcoin not really being useful in these countries. Never mind Venezuela, finding someone providing a useful service or product in my own country isn't easy, and it's among the most technologically developed in the region.

But speaking to Venezuelans, and now even Iranians and Turks facing inflation, simply being able to hold value in Bitcoin, being able to then transfer that value abroad, and now finding it relatively easy to find a willing buyer for us dollar or euro... Makes Bitcoin absolutely a viable alternative.

Wasn't it you who asked about the reasons why gold fell in 2008?

Actually, I didn't start arguing with you either. I just questioned the validity of your claim, and then I admitted that I was not going to quarrel over that point. Regarding your question, I see no reason why gold should have fallen in value on its own. To make things clear and not to engage in further futile debates, by falling in value on its own, I mean demand evaporating, not supply surging for some unspecified reason (e.g. due to massive sell-offs)

Basically, the abrupt (relative to a decade long growth) crash looks to me more like a sudden explosion in supply, not demand running low. And if you have to sell something in amounts which the market can't easily absorb, you would do better and get better price if you start selling slow allowing the market to rebuild itself and provide firm support. It is exactly how the Mt. Gox custodian had been selling bitcoins, without crashing the price (too much)

You basically repeat what I have been telling here for years

That it is unlikely we are going to see mass adoption of Bitcoin as a means of exchange in the near future. But it doesn't in the least mean that Bitcoin is useless and worthless. It is perfectly equipped for remittances as you don't depend on third parties (read, rogue banks and governments alike) as well as the fee you have to pay doesn't depend on the amount transacted (so-called flat fees). If this area of application expands dramatically in the coming years, we may also expect the prices to stabilize and Bitcoin's use as a store of value expand as well

When the bitcoin price was near 20.000$ we were all dreaming it will moon further to 100.000$ which didn't happen. Maybe after the next halving we will see the 6 digits?

You think they posses wealth at all ? I mean you think a Venezuelan who is having trouble finding food is going to just put their "wealth" into bitcoin somehow ? This is a whole country that lost weight because of how poor they are, do you really think all they care about is money at this moment ? I mean think about it, even if you had all the money in the world, the country itself is running out of food constantly, whenever they manage to gather enough money together they try to get food from other countries and than it ends very quickly and they are hungry yet again.

People died of starvation there every single day since this problem started. You think those people should just put their money into bitcoin? What money, what wealth ? We are talking about people who die of starvation, there is no wealth there at all.

I thought after that:

NOV 28, 2018

Fundstrat's Tom Lee: Bear Markets Are a ‘Golden Time’ to Be in Crypto (https://cointelegraph.com/news/fundstrats-tom-lee-bear-markets-are-a-golden-time-to-be-in-crypto)

DEC 13, 2018

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee Says Fair Value of Bitcoin to Reach $150K Per Coin (https://cointelegraph.com/news/fundstats-tom-lee-says-fair-value-of-bitcoin-to-reach-150k-per-coin)

the guy would stop appearing on news channels, because those erroneous predictions are destroying his reputation

NOV 20, 2018

Tom Lee Maintains $15,000 Year-End BTC Prediction Despite Market Crash (https://cointelegraph.com/news/tom-lee-maintains-15-000-year-end-btc-prediction-despite-market-crash)

we are already in 2019 and the price is below $4000

I'm sure that there is a small percentage of people there with enough capital to park a chunk of it in gold or Bitcoin, but what can you do with it when you run out of funds at one point?

What people there need is the US dollar, which is easier to buy into, and easier to utilize in case you need it, because it's possible to spend it almost everywhere. Stability is a key element, and that's what the US dollar offers.

With Bitcoin you don't know what its value is going to be tomorrow or next year. People assume it will go up, and it likely will, but what if it doesn't? It's too much of a risk since there are no certainties here.

Venezuela is in a financial crisis, not in armageddon hehehe.

@BitHodler. However, it might be safer to hold a volatile but valuable asset or currency than to hold a fiat currency that cannot hold any value or has no value.

The same basically applies to people in Venezuela using their native fiat currency. Today you can buy your groceries with X amount of fiat, while the next week you need twice as much in fiat to buy the same groceries.

The Bolivar lost way more of its value than Bitcoin from its near $20,000 peak to where we are right now. In other words, buying Bitcoin at near peak levels (most people buy way lower since only a few people buy and sell the top) and holding it till today was a better deal than holding X amount in Bolivars within the same time frame. The good thing here is that Bitcoin will be going up again so your paper losses will turn into paper profits, while the Bolivar will keep tanking.

Even a can of tuna with a limited shelf life is a better store of value than the Bolivar.

Sure, losing 80% of your value is better than losing nearly all of it, but still it's pretty bad. Imagine someone from Venezuela putting their savings in Bitcoin at the ATH and now having only 20% of the original investment - this can be extremely devastating.

Of course Bitcoin will recover and will eventually surpass the previous ATH, but it takes time, maybe years, and poor people might not have it, as they struggle to survive every single day in Venezuela and other extremely poor countries. It's only easy to say "HODL" when you've put a small amount of your savings and wouldn't get too hurt even if Bitcoin goes to zero.

This is a possible scenario but statistically not a very likely one

If we assume that a certain Venezuelan had bought bitcoins at 10k, which is a lot more plausible given the short span of time that Bitcoin was trading above that mark, he would have had his purchasing power halved by now (a little more than that but for simplicity's sake let it be so). Then the real question is, how much would he have lost if he had kept the local currency, i.e. the Venezuelan bolivar, all that time?

And we are not taking into account the fact that there is virtually no chance for his bolivar stash to regain its purchasing power in the future, while Bitcoin stash definitely can, and with a vengeance at that

https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/currency

I believe "he" would have kept more value by buying Bitcoin at $10,000 than holding all that in Bolivar. Haha.

I didn't check yet, but visually the chart shows that the Bolivar is losing much more value than Bitcoin.


Plus it will always be more in demand than the Bolivar.

Who wants to hold Bolivars? Hahaha.

First of all, people who live there still need bolivar so that is the answer of your question. As long as shops and stores there require bolivar instead of bitcoin people there will need bolivar, there is no question of "who needs bolivar" because that is a nations currency, its like saying "who needs dollars", I understand bitcoin is much more global and will  always be more global but bolivar will always be the national currency for them and that is important.

However, that doesn't mean bitcoin investment wasn't better, it was miles better for people and even if it lost value it didn't lose as much as bolivar, the only reason people still use bolivar instead of bitcoin is that they need to pay for stuff to stay alive in bolivar and can't do that in bitcoin, that is the only reason.

Technically, we don't know how things really are in Venezuela

I mean, with respect to your assumption that people still need bolivars for everyday needs. But I can tell you how it was in other countries that went through the periods of hyperinflation in their past. It is exactly as assumed here, with shops and merchants refusing to accept local currency. It doesn't of course mean that they are ready to accept cryptocurrencies, but the latter is rather a problem of cryptocurrencies, not merchants as such (let's be honest here, there is still plenty of room for improvement)

Typically, the US dollar is being asked for payment in these circumstances but it can be some other stable currency which is circulating in the area. And if the local government is unable to efficiently squash hyperinflation, the end result is just that, i.e. local currency being completely abandoned, at first by simple people and then by the government itself. The most notorious and well-known example of such an outcome is Zimbabwe (and their Zimbabwean dollar), but it is definitely not the only one

Is the money in circulation ample enough to defend Tom Lee's prediction? The S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq are in their all time highs, I reckon the rally must end somewhere.