Given that I'm talking about someone who believes the price is either going to go to millions in a few years or zero (asymmetric bet), if they also believed this when they first bought into BTC, they should have invested just a small portion of their total assets at that time - enough to become so rich at the end that they won't care much about having a bit more.

The price rose this year, and indeed BTC swelled to be a much larger portion of their total assets, but unless that price rise changed their long-term outlook, they still have the amount of BTC they need so that they will be as rich as they care to be at the end.

Selling large amounts risks ending up with them being substantially less wealthy than they'd like to be, but trading the bear market to double their BTC doesn't hold much appeal to them long term (ex hypothesi). Now of course medium-term they might get to take more profits and reach their goal sooner, but to do that at the risk of never reaching that goal may not be palatable to said investor.

Now of course if someone overinvested at the beginning because they underestimated the long-term BTC price, they should take very health profits now if they haven't yet, by all means, but it would be odd to just assume that the readers have all changed their long-term price expectations. Someone with consistent long-term expectations for the asymmetric bet and consistent risk tolerance wouldn't be expected to sell what to them constitutes a "large" portion of their position unless they suddenly needed fiat for something.

Note: I'm not rpietila; I'm much more long-term bullish than him

1) Even though the price is likely to fall further, it could easily rebound above $100 or even $120 in what might be a bull trap. If you sell at $75 and it jumps to $120, you might not buy back because "it's a bull trap." But what if it just keeps rising? Not likely without some kind of obvious news, but certainly possible. Before you know it, you've lost most of your position. And if you understand where Bitcoin is going, losing most of your position hurts an awful lot.

2) If you think one bitcoin will be worth millions in a few years, it hardly matters whether you have 200 or 400; you're going to be a fucking tycoon either way. If you already sold a reasonable portion of your holdings during the higher portion of the bubble, as is prudent in any rapid price rise, you should have little need to be overly greedy in trying to increase your stash by outsmarting the market. You've got some nice fiat profits, and you probably already have plenty of bitcoins to be secure in your future a few years from now. No reason to play with fire. If you understand the asymmetric bet, dumping most of your position is playing with fire in terms of possibly burning your future massive wealth.

TL;DR: I'd only sell large portions of your holdings if you think Bitcoin isn't going to succeed.

"Those who govern Bitcoin"?? A government could conceivably push the current devs to implement rule changes, but of course very few people would adopt those updates and a host of new/anonymous devs would come out of the woodwork to carry the development torch the moment there was even credible suspicion of government involvement. No one "governs" Bitcoin!

Bitcoin economy? Who cares? Bitcoin has its backstop as a medium of exchange because it is popular for certain types of transactions that would otherwise be impractical. It only needs a small backstop. With that, it comes into its own as a store of value. Volatility is more than made up for by massive, consistent yearly gains. It is a superhero store of value, because it is immune to scrutiny and control by third parties, like no other asset out there.

It isn't written in the stars that Bitcoin's first best use will be as a medium of exchange. That is something people have projected onto it due to their preconceptions. The Bitcoin doesn't care. It's its own thing. Network effects and inertia are a huge botteneck to rapid adoption in most types of commerce for now anyway.

It's as if people are stuck in the old paradigm, where the original vexing problem was how to get people to value bitcoins at all. Lazlo and some others solved that problem, then SR and some others provided permanent deep backing - not gigantic but deep enough that "you can always eventually find someone who needs bitcoins."

Let's stop living in the past with the vestigial obsession with commerce driven by the lurking fear that maybe bitcoins aren't really going to be valued. We're past that. More commerce helps, everything helps, but we're past the point where Bitcoin's utility as a store of value was dependent on getting trade for actual goods and services kickstarted.

This dependence mindset needs to die. It is a relic of problems that Bitcoin hasn't had for years. Bitcoin has arrived. It's here to stay, barring major technical catastrophe or obsolescence due to something better (and the latter is no cause for concern, since we'll all have plenty of advance warning because anything new needs time to develop reputation and infrastructure). The actual use of Bitcoin for trade is never going to die out, even if it remains small for a while. It's too useful as a store of value, and that utility will inevitably drive it into more people's hands, driving up the price, stabilizing the price with larger volume, boosting mining incentive to make the system more secure, and increasing development and infrastructural investment in a virtuous cycle. When more people have it and the price is stabler and the infrastructure sounder and the apps more user-friendly, trade will develop naturally.

Commerce will take its turn at prominence when it's ready. For now I see no reason to fret about slow progress on that front given how amazingly successful Bitcoin continues to be as a store of value. It is only natural that these two functionalities will take turns leapfrogging each other in importance over the years as Bitcoin (or another cryptocurrency) zigs and zags its way onto the world stage.

I thought the statistic was that 9 out of 10 first businesses fail. Entrepreneurs' second and third businesses seem to do a lot better, maybe because the first failure disabused them of their initial naïve notions.

You must not have been much of an Austrian if you didn't even grasp the basic point that individualism has nothing to do with isolationism. Also, it's a simple correlation-causation fallacy to claim that rainforest tribes are not advancing because they are anarchistic.

All these technologies (Internet, Bitcoin, Google Glass, 3D printing) tend to have a strong decentralizing effect overall, so from that general rule of thumb we should prime facie expect to see small business benefiting versus big business. I see no reason why that wouldn't happen and can think of plenty of use cases where small businesses would get a leg up through 3D printing, so all in all it looks very positive for small business.

Here's why I can't agree: If you get searched, your gold and dollar bills are find-able, hence knowable; as long as you simply make sure you know your private key, your bitcoins are not find-able nor is their existence knowable.

It's hard to tell whether it's the channel providing support or the (very) round number of $100 providing support. Fortunately, we'll either be up higher in a few weeks or we'll break down through the top of the channel and know it was the round number support instead.

Not a chance they will ease up.

Insofar as AnCaps like Rothbard claim to know what an ideal society would look like (it would/wouldn't have intellectual property, etc.), they contradict themselves. However, it is entirely unnecessary for an anti-statist to claim they know how society should ideally operate; consistent AnCaps understand that the market (the natural order of society) will determine everything.

Great debate on this exact point:

http://wwww.qjae.org/community/forums/p/10277/273307.aspx#273307

It may be hide-able, technically, but the level of insane you'd have to be to actually store millions or billions in your home or wallet only further underscores my point. Bitcoins are hide-able with no risk of theft.

Your reply is a textbook example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Strange, I'm on a smartphone and can see it all. Here's the original: https://i.imgur.com/Jv8oSut.png

Bitcoin eliminates the very need for them to rely on others. In fact, this just adds further weight to my point that Bitcoin provides unique options for HNWIs that they can get nowhere else.

- Need a "No idea" or "Just show me the results" option or else people will just click one to see the results.

- "Mandatory fee" doesn't even make sense because each miner will decide; there are ultimately no mandators in the Bitcoin world and I think this is a slight but important indicator of thinking about this in the wrong way a way that is inefficient. It makes people freak out because they think everything has to be consensus and unilateral. Really people will do what they want with dust transactions on their own terms, and the devs can only stay in their role as long as they continue to support the miners' ability to do just that. The new changes to lay the groundwork for a fee market to arise are a big step toward this.

The reason it especially applies to (very) wealthy people is 1) they stand to lose the most money from their portfolio not having these superhero abilities and are most likely to come under scrutiny for the amounts they'd like to hide or teleport, and 2) they have the leeway to allocate parts of their portfolio to a greater variety of stores of value.

Certainly Joe the Plumber getting arrested and having his $100k in savings frozen and inaccessible while he's in jail or trying to hire a lawyer or move people on the outside, he will be very glad he had some in BTC. But HNWIs have a higher standard for comfort and security, so preparing for all eventualities tends to be higher on their list of priorities, and some of those eventualities can only be prepared for with Bitcoin.

I'm offering no judgment on the behavior of fat cats or criminals, just pointing out that once these people understand Bitcoin they'll realize they have to have some - and that does good things for all BTC holders.

Millions? Billions? Doubtful... see the point?

Fair point, though the feature set here is supposed to be about offshoring money for HNWIs, no daily spending. Yeah, I put a few things like that in there, but they can just as well be removed. Such a person is probably not going to be shopping with BTC at this point unless they're a cryptocurrency enthusiast.


Note that I said, "Why should all highly wealthy people be excited about Bitcoin? It offers several "superhero" attributes that make it the ultimate store of wealth for people who are rich enough that the possibility of confiscation or even public knowledge of their wealth becomes a major issue." That is, becomes enough of a major issue that it overshadows Bitcoin's volatility and existential risk.

And this is exactly the point: NO OTHER ASSET provides these superhero attributes, so it would be crazy for a very wealthy person not to have some significant amount of money in Bitcoin. It's simple. If you don't hold bitcoins, all your wealth could be wiped out by a government moving against you; if you hold Bitcoins, sure you could lose them all, but your risk is mitigated in a way that nothing else can do for you.

Capitalism, as in free trade and voluntary interaction, is not going to fail. Much of the establishment of corporatist inefficiency will be in turmoil and the collateral damage for everyone may be severe, but eventually the natural order will recover better and stronger than before.

Bitcoin may well be an integral part of that recovery process, but the Internet most definitely will. For whether Bitcoin plays a big role it's all a question of timing. And timing-wise we are in an odd position: every estimate of when the collapse will happen has been premature, yet when it actually does happen it will surprise in the opposite direction - earlier than we expect. That is, we are always expecting a collapse within 1-2 years, but 10 years later still nothing. Yet when the collapse finally does happen, it will blindside us because we'll still be expecting it not to happen for another 1-2 years, or maybe even 3-6 months, but not on a dime.