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1621  Economy / Economics / Re: Gold Is Yesterday, Here Comes Bitcoin As A Reserve Currency on: November 17, 2017, 09:04:40 PM
Quote
Peter Thiel – PayPal co-founder and billionaire venture capitalist, for a long time now has been a backer of the virtual currency Bitcoin. Thiel did again indicate out the ‘real potential’ of BTC at the Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, pointing out that people are truly underestimating it.

Peter Thiel has long been one of the early proponents of Bitcoin. As early as 2013, he stated that Bitcoin has the potential to change the world. As one of the co-founders of PayPal, he recognized the ability of Bitcoin to revolutionize the monetary space. He had long held the view that monetary sovereignty’s time is limited and encrypted money would be the future. Earlier Peter Thiel did comment on how Bitcoin unlike PayPal, was really able to create a currency.

Bitcoin BTC could very well be the virtual gold of our time and replace it as a reserve currency – according to Peter Thiel. Many ‘similarities’ were compared between the two by Thiel like it is mineable and its limited supply.

“It’s like a reserve form of money, it’s like gold and it’s just a store of value. If Bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold, it has a great potential left.”

On the other hand, Peter did not really have any enthusiastic feel about the other virtual assets and altcoins which could be discouraging for altcoin followers which have put their hopes for most part of the year on them.

While Peter Thiel is pretty bullish on the potential of Bitcoin, in Riyadh, a certain Saudi prince has a different view. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the richest Arab in the world, believes that Bitcoin will implode like Enron. While Bitcoin trading is allowed in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority has warned people about the risks of investing in Bitcoin. The Middle East is a region teeming with billionaires and if Peter Thiel has managed to convince a few people to invest their oil-dollars in Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin could receive a boost.

http://ethereumworldnews.com/gold-yesterday-comes-bitcoin-reserve-currency/

Tired of "is bitcoin is a bubble"?

Now you can enjoy the wonders of "is bitcoin a reserve currency"?  

On a serious note, it is possible bitcoin could eventually become a reserve currency to replace gold. This paradigm could represent the natural evolution of cryptocoins with limited supply if it is established that limited supply and algorithmic based regulation are best methods to promote stability and long term value.

Would be interested to know public opinion on this. Would people feel safer having bitcoin as a reserve currency than they would having fiat like the dollar or euro as reserve?



Another label to argue over! Haha, I share your facetious take on this. I think a legitimate hindrance to trusting Bitcoin as a reserve currency is the arbitrariness with which it currently operates. We are about to have our third hardfork in very recent memory where some group of people who think they have the answer to bitcoin's problems will be splitting off and attempting to claim the mantle Bitcoin has built. That type of instability and uncertainty about the future makes it impossible for Bitcoin to become a reserve currency.

Bitcoin has always obliterated scammy competition attempting forks....doesn't sound like that is changing anytime soon. Or do you not believe in market forces? Perhaps you would rather have your bank appoint some central group of people to oversee an organization that'll decide what assets or what companies survives and what fails?

Well in case you haven't noticed, the US financial system under the aegis of the Federal Reserve happens to be functioning quite well, and the gold standard was abandoned because of the handcuffs it put the economy in.  As for hard forks, I'm all for letting the market decide the must useful speculative coin asset. But every joker group trying to split off of btc with a new hard fork isn't producing anything particularly useful at this point, and the infighting between groups is likely to be more harmful than not. As for what is the more useful reserve currency, it's not even close. Bitcoin loses in a landslide to the USD. Could change in the future, but I doubt it based on how things are progressing.
1622  Economy / Economics / Re: Turkish Central Bank President: “Cryptocurrencies May Contribute to Financial on: November 17, 2017, 08:47:34 PM
Did the Turkish president say how he thinks BTC can contribute to financial stability and why he thinks that is? I have been holding BTC for a while now, and its not contributing to my financial stability. Its good now because its on a bull run, but what if the bubble bursts?

There are other contributions that BTC can bring to society but because of high volatility, its not financial stability.

I haven't seen anyone make a convincing argument for how bitcoin is going to bring financial stability or economic prosperity (that second one I'm throwing in because I always see that argument too). I suppose if anyone making the argument were asked how, they wouldn't be able to come up with a good answer because they're too busy buying into meaningless hype without critically thinking about it. You know what is a stable and prosperous system? The financial system in the US that bitcoin proponents think it's going to radically improve. I don't see it happening, and they don't either, they just don't realize it because they've never been asked to justify the position before.
1623  Economy / Speculation / Re: Report: Bitcoin to $25,000 by 2022 on: November 17, 2017, 07:20:26 PM
Bitcoin is the black swan and the predictions are ungrateful since they can fail miserably. But, if the institutional money starts to flow in and existing problems are addressed in a satisfactory way, it can go even higher. Check for example last 20 years of Berkshire Hathaway A share value http://www.morningstar.com/stocks/XNYS/BRK.A/quote.html


Berkshire is a huge conglomerate that owns hundreds of businesses though. That's a crucial difference. Berkshire's stock reflects an ownership stake in those businesses, and thus a legal right to the profits. So stocks have inherent value because they represent something that can be turned into cash. This is the opposite of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is only worth what everyone thinks it is worth, and if the perception of the value changes to 0, there is no inherent value there to keep the price up. In Berkshire stock, everyone would never consider the stock to be worth 0 unless all the businesses Berkshire owned were worth 0.

Inherent value is an important point to understand, because it represents a lot of risk when a speculative asset has no inherent value like Bitcoin.
1624  Economy / Economics / Re: Is Bitcoin actually just a Investment coin? on: November 17, 2017, 07:14:20 PM
I think the title says it all.

After a long time of thinking, reading and also investing a bit into Bitcoin I have to say that it looks for me that the main use is actually just pure Investment. It always looks like that everyone just talks about how great the Technology is although they secretly want to get super rich with a always raising price. Of course it's used with several shopping or daily things, but that's just such a small part of it.
During that, people who don't want to take the risk to invest call it a "Bubble" and people who don't want to lose their money just make kind of stupid speculations without any arguments.

In the end (just my opinion) the price of Bitcoin is controlled by all the media (that's hyping bitcoin and talking about it everywhere) and all the really big bitcoin whales with e.g. like 10000+ coins can actually effect the market the most. Imagine what a few people with a huge amount of bitcoins could work out together to control the market and making money.

It's just weird, because it turns this, what everyone calls it, great technology in the end just to a fully commercial object to earn money. Which would be probably also the reason why it stays and raises all the time, because it's normal that everyone wants to make a big amount of money with this little effort.

Let me know what you guys think and please don't give me this non argumented one liner like in all the other threads Wink

It's certainly not a useful currency, and doesn't hold a stable store of value, which would preclude it as a currency in my book. However, merely classifying it as an "investment," while accurate, doesn't go far enough in classifying it for me. I would argue that it is a speculation coin more than an investment coin.

I don't think the media controls the price of bitcoin though because they never controlled the price. (Control and influence are not the same thing.) They certainly keep the hype up and this influences awareness, but it doesn't control the price. Bitcoin has reached a certain critical mass at this point that it would persist without constant media attention.
1625  Economy / Economics / Re: SegWit2x Called Off on: November 17, 2017, 06:07:13 PM
Maybe, a called off for SegWit2x is a good thing. Bitcoin needs to go slowly, there were too many hard forks in the past and a break is needed, if it wants to go further and higher from this current position.

However, I think SegWit2x will continue the scheduled hard fork within a short period...
Probably they realize that it is not the right time to launched that hardfork. Because as they said, there are only few miners and investors supporting this fork and it would be possible that this won't be recognized by the community if they still continue to launched it.

Anyway, this is just a kind of adjustment and  development towards crypto world as they want to spread it in the other form of coins. But this is not the way to take our risk in dealing those coins and losing our money.

I agree entirely. SegWit2x needed to go down and I'm glad it did. However, I fear that an inability of BTC to solve the capacity problem is only going to lead to its decline. There's nothing special about Bitcoin in particular, and other cryptos can (and are trying) to take its place as the preeminent crypto asset. If consensus can't be reached, and there's a good indication some folks will always be opposed for any number of reasons good and bad, then the network will become more and more unusable. There are already plenty of suitable replacements. And at the same time the small blocks are a disadvantage to those suitable replacements, they also make BTC susceptible to spam attacks that clog the network. So a solution is needed, and time is of the essence.
1626  Economy / Economics / Re: Obligatory: Is Bitcoin Cash A Bubble? on: November 17, 2017, 05:57:39 PM
Any idea if it'll ever get pumped again? It sure looked like a bubble to me. I mean, what makes Bitcoin Cash better than bitcoin anyway. I suppose this would happen to Bitcoin Gold.

I'm not certain I would call it "better," but one definite advantage right now is it is far less susceptible to spam attacks than Bitcoin is. At the time BCH was reaching those highs, BTC was being crushed by a spam attack that ballooned the unconfirmed transaction to over 170,000 (which it is still recovering from; currently around 50k unconfirmed) while at the same time losing a ton of mining capacity to BCH.



The point where BCH overtook BTC in hash power corresponds to the BTC's fall to $5000 and BCH's high. BCH, with 8MB blocks can handle a crush like that much better, and makes manipulating the market that much more difficult.
1627  Economy / Economics / Re: BITCOIN AS A COMMODITY: IS THIS ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT SUBVERSION? on: November 17, 2017, 12:25:19 PM
So, the bankers say that they cannot accept Bitcoin as a currency in the way it is defined by the BIS (Bank of International Settlement).

This can be seen as a clever way to lessen the potential of bitcoin/ cryptocurrencies to replace fiat and to ensure that the supremacy of central banks is maintained.
If you make it a commodity, you pay Fiat to trade in bitcoin and treat it as a good like copper, gold or petroleum. But nobody uses copper to go buy a car or buy a coffee right? Is this what they intend to do??

What do you think would be the impact if bitcoin is treated as a commodity vs a currency? I think it has reached a stage where it does matter what bank/ regulatory authorities say about bitcoin.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/south-koreas-central-bank-chief-bitcoin-commodity-not-currency/

Regardless of what the central banks consider it to be, the far more important point is that everyone treats it like a commodity and not a currency. There's no conspiracy by the central banks, this is just the de facto situation. Nobody uses it as a currency. It's a store of value or get rich quick speculative asset. Bottom line: it's a commodity, and will be a commodity as long as people continue to  treat like they do.
1628  Economy / Economics / Re: Massive bitcoin manipulation possible? on: November 17, 2017, 12:21:24 PM
Would it be possible for a group of extremely rich billionaires & other powerful individuals to manipulate the bitcoin market? e.g. Pump and dump, exposure to news networks, lobbying for favourable bitcoin regulation,etc Huh

Possible, but likely is another question. One thing for sure is we've likely seen large attempts to manipulate the market already. The spam attacks that clog the Bitcoin network are clear attempts at manipulation. The current spam attack seems to be tapering off, but unconfirmed transactions reached at least 180,000 during the height, which coincided with Butcoin's fall to $5000 and BCH's flash high to $2800. It's speculation, but I would say that was an objective of the spam attack to profit in BCH.
1629  Economy / Economics / Re: Cashless society on: November 17, 2017, 12:18:03 PM
Have you ever wondered how would the world's economy be like in the future as a cashless society?

Perhaps, with the increased traction of blockchain acceptance nowadays, could lead to the creation of digital fiat currencies powered by blockchains that are managed by governments themselves. With this in mind, there would be no need for physical cash, as digital fiat currencies would provide many advantages such as quick settlement, global payments, full transparency, implants use on citizens to make payments, and more.

If this becomes a reality, which I'm sure that it will, it would radically transform our lives for the better and reduce criminal activity as a result of the full transparency and auditability that a digital fiat currency would have thanks to the power of the blockchain technology.

Also, it makes me wonder if cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin would exist by that time, or will they co-exist with digital fiat currencies.

Nevertheless, I would like to know your opinion about this.  Wink

The world has been moving towards a cashless society for a long time before blockchain, and would continue moving in that direction even without it today. We already have digital fiat without blockchain, so that's not a prerequisite. The world will go cashless without Bitcoin, and it will do it better, as didgital fiat is far more useful than any crypto due to its wildly fluctuating value. Companies like Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Square have done far more than Bitcoin has in moving the world off cash.
1630  Economy / Economics / Re: Would you invest in Russian business? on: November 17, 2017, 12:11:57 PM
What do you think about crypto-investing to business projects wich location in Russia?

Crypto or otherwise, countries like Russia and China have problems due to the policies and widespread corruption of their governments that undermine investment confidence. Simply put, there's no guarantee that a successful business in those countries aren't going to be taken over by the government or have to kowtow to censorship or other authoritarian demands. I am not interested in investing in those countries.
1631  Economy / Economics / Re: Obligatory: Is Bitcoin Cash A Bubble? on: November 13, 2017, 03:29:45 AM
Is bch a bubble?

If bch is a bubble, has that bubble popped?

[img]

For reference, it was not long ago that ethereum was considered a good investment with a massive spike eerily similar to what bch is indicating now.

[img]

Do the people behind bch and eth seem like individuals whose goal is to create long term value and wealth. Or do they seem more like the types to focus on short term gains to the expense of long term value? I think Satoshi was a creator of longer term value, which is why bitcoin has done as well as it has. As for Roger Ver and whoever is running ethereum now, I would be interested to know what public opinion on them is.   Huh

On a more technical side, should bitcoin cash be worth 1/4th of what it is given it has very limited utility. It isn't supported by retailers. It doesn't many have uses or real world application. There's not much good about bitcoin cash to favor it. There is a chance that bitcoin cash's real world value is $400. Whatever value it appears to have may be an illusion.


It's far too soon to be calling a burst bubble on BCH. We're barely 12 hours away from its all time high, and people want to call the bubble finished. What is certain at this point is that BCH is extremely volatile, and that it has seen a massive influx of capital at the same time that BTC has seen a massive outflow of capital. This is likely not a coincidence. Any pullback from a high is not a burst bubble. Far more time needs to elapse before any conclusion can be drawn, there's just not enough data yet.

In response to the bolded text, this is mostly inaccurate. BCH has no less utility than BTC. It is easy for merchants who take BTC to switch to BCH, the fact that they haven't (yet) is not an indication that they won't, especially so young in BCH's life cycle. This would be the equivalent of people claiming 3 months after bitcoin was released that nobody uses it to buy anything, so it's never going to amount to anything. Obviously, that was shortsighted and wrong. Not only is the reasoning wrong, but there's an increasing case to be made that BCH will be more useful than BTC. With SegWit2x called off, there is no proposal on the table to scale BTC and there likely won't be for some time. BCH was created to create the capacity that BTC was neglecting, and add to that that BTC is currently being crushed by a massive spam attack, and BCH looks even better. I believe the spam attack is meant to cripple the network and drive more people to BCH, and although that's shady as hell, the point remains that BTC can't handle the traffic, and a protocol that is prone to manipulation like that is not useful or secure.

I've been against BCH since the fork that created it, but I also just want the tech to work, and BTC is currently failing in that regard compared to BCH. I'm not ready to switch the horse I'm rooting for yet, but at the end of the day, I'm not sticking with BTC just to stick with BTC because the tech has to work!
1632  Economy / Speculation / Re: Report: Bitcoin to $25,000 by 2022 on: November 09, 2017, 11:07:41 PM
Where bitcoin will reach will solely depend on innovations and community acceptance. There are a lot of problems to be solved and as the solutions keep arriving and the network keeps getting robust, the price will keep rising. A 4-5K increase for each of the following
1. Solve micro transaction problem
2. Solve Transaction speed and scaling issue.
3. Solve the miner vs user ambiguity.

Thats an easy +15K in the coming 1-2 years itself. I say by 2020 beginning, well be looking at 25k

All of these things are easier said than done. SegWit2x was an attempt to solve scaling issues, and look what a terribly fiasco that turned into before they finally scrapped it. The failure of SegWit2x actually gives a boost to Bitcoin Cash in my book. Both attempted to solve scalability and network congestion, and both went about it in different ways. I originally thought SegWit2x was the way to go, but the way they tried to force it through and threaten the system with chaos really undermines the attempt. Now Bitcoin Cash is the remaining alt with a scalability solution, and it's probably not a coincidence that it's up a good chunk on the failure of SegWit2x. (To be fair, a lot of alts are up as money flows back out of btc right now.)
1633  Economy / Economics / Re: Bitcoin Gold is Forking Off on: November 09, 2017, 11:02:23 PM
With the imminent release of bitcoin gold (another garbage, pointless coin) in the next 24 hours, it's a good time to remind everyone that the developers are shady. This is a China-miner lead fork, it serves no purpose other than the enrichment of the developers. According to Coinbase (https://support.coinbase.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2892196-bitcoin-gold-faq?b_id=13521), the developers are pre-mining 100,000 coins before releasing the code to the public. That's shady, garbage, self-enrichment behavior, and I hope this coin flames out because it's clearly designed to only enrich the developers. So essentially, after the fork happens, the only people mining will be the developers, and when they've determined they've made themselves rich enough, they'll release the code to the public while they probably dump their pre-mined coins.

Don't be one of the dummies buying.

Looks like bitcoin gold is finally getting a release date of this weekend for the rest of us peasants who haven't been privileged enough to part of the insiders pre-mining the heck out of it.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-gold-release-cryptocurrency-sunday/

Again, I can't reiterate enough how much I hope this project fails. Nothing about this was done in a way to uphold or advance the principles cryptocurrencies were founded on, and everything about it seems like a cover to enrich the developers. Bitcoin cash looks like a bunch of saints compared to these guys.
1634  Economy / Economics / Re: NASDAQ vs BTC on: November 09, 2017, 08:54:48 PM
Hmmm  Getting closer.. ?? :-)

I see you resurrected this thread.  These old threads are sometimes fun to look back over. The 30% equities correction never materialized; the stock market has been on a pretty consistent tear since the OP. Longest bull run in history at this point. I'm not convinced of any correlation between btc and equity markets anyway, except that in the next market correction, I expect both crypto and equities to suffer a big pullback, and I expect btc to take bigger losses.  I do want to point out how funny it seems now that the graph in the OP was concerned about a collapse from the $200s as a bubble, when bitcoin routinely trades up or down $200 in a matter of hours now. Sitting above $7000, the concern of the drop from $250 to $150 seems adorable! 

Btw, I'm totally concerned btc is currently a bubble, especially because nobody seems to see the constant price rise as a problem. That parallels the .com crash and the housing crash.
1635  Economy / Economics / Re: I have 12 BTC in my Account, How should I invest this?? on: November 09, 2017, 08:40:58 PM
Advice, tips, speculation please.

Reading the earliest posts in this thread is almost quaint! Back when this thread was posted, everyone was saying "hold on to the end of the year, the halving is coming and could really boost the price." Back when the OP was posted, 12 btc was worth around $5,000, and now it's worth over $84,000. It's funny to see how far everything has come. OP even posted later in this thread remarking about how far the price has come (it was at $730 at the time) and how happy he was with that. Flash forward to today, 10x later...
1636  Economy / Speculation / Re: $50,000 Bitcoin In The Next Couple Of Months? on: November 09, 2017, 08:35:18 PM

In his latest video, Mike Maloney ponders the questions 'Could Bitcoin hit $50,000 in the next couple of months?' and also, 'Is Bitcoin in a bubble and could it crash?' You may be surprised to hear how Mike answered these questions and the action he has taken accordingly.



Click here to watch this video:

https://mikemaloneyblog.blogspot.ca/2017/11/50000-bitcoin-in-next-couple-of-months.html


This is a bit click baity, no? First, it's presenting two diametrically opposed ideas: 1) could bitcoin reach $50,000 in the next couple months; and 2) could bitcoin be a bubble and crash?

So those are the two options to ponder, extreme upside or total devastation? Of the two, I'd consider a popped bubble far more likely than $50k btc in a few months. Anyone trying that hard for attention ($50k is an outlandish claim) should be viewed suspiciously.  And I wouldn't particularly trust anyone hawking both ideas at the same time. The non-informational baiting is the kicker: "You may be surprised to hear how Mike answered these questions..." Classic click bait wording.
1637  Economy / Economics / Re: SegWit2x Called Off on: November 09, 2017, 06:08:25 PM
I'm guessing this news has something to do with the volatile spikes today. Bitcoin dropped from 7800 to 7100 in about an hour earlier today. SegWit2x is being suspended by organizers for lack of consensus.

The organizers of a controversial bitcoin software update are suspending their attempt to increase the block size by way of a hard fork.

Known for its strong early support from bitcoin startups and mining pools, the plan, called Segwit2x, or simply '2x,' was to trigger a block size increase at block 494,784, expected to occur on or around November 16th. The goal of the project, according to those involved, was to use the measure to increase bitcoin's transaction capacity, which is today constrained by the nature of the software's rules.

The suspension was announced today in an email written by Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of bitcoin wallet software provider BitGo. One of the leaders of the Segwit2x project, he argued that the scaling proposal is too controversial to move forward.

He wrote:

"Unfortunately, it is clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean block size upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of Segwit2x."

"Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade," he added.

The note is also signed by companies that originally supported the plan, forged at an in-person meeting in May, including Xapo CEO Wences Casares, Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu, Bloq CEO and co-founder Jeff Garzik, Blockchain CEO and co-founder Peter Smith and Shapeshift CEO and founder Erik Voorhees.

The group said that it still hopes the block size will be increased further down the line, once there is more agreement from stakeholders.

In statements to the BTC1 Slack group, developer Jeff Garzik said the alternative software would continue to be developed, and that it may support "other chains such as bitcoin cash, litecoin and other bitcoin-family chains."

I was initially pro-SegWit2x, but seeing how it was being implemented and the plan to intentionally refuse to implement replay attack protection as a means to force itself into the dominant chain, I have to say that I'm glad this is being called off. As planned, I don't think this was going to go well and would have likely lead to a dramatic price crash in the ensuing battle.

I have seen some people arguing that BCH was a beneficiary of the SegWit2x fork, but I wonder if this dims the prospect of BCH now for them. The price of that coin has been holding up better than I would have expected.



"I'm guessing this news has something to do with the volatile spikes today. Bitcoin dropped from 7800 to 7100 in about an hour earlier today. "

few minutes after the announcement the bitcoin price has been spiking hard, from about 7400 to 7900 in less then 10 minutes, and then the instant fix has came out and it dropped down to about 7700$ before breaking the support point at 7000$.

Basically, we are can't say that the news about the fork cancellation made the price drop, because the first reaction was a sudden rise.

I think that there are a lot of people who sold their bitcoins because they thought that the upcoming fork is going to hurt it, and once they realized that the fork won't happen, they decided to buy it again,.


The initial rise was so short and completely overshadowed by the subsequent drop, I would write off the price rise as either a coincidence or a substantially small number of traders making a bad bet that the news would lead everyone to buy more and they were trying to capitalize on that. That peak was so short it only shows on a 24 hour graph, any longer duration completely washes it out because it had no staying power. The fact that the price has remained more than 10% below that peak ever since leads me to conclude that the larger market disagrees with that initial gambler, and money has been trickling out in response to the fork being called off. As bitcoin remains down, almost every alt coin on the front page coinmarketcap is showing gains as that fork money flows back into the alts that were abandoned to try and score free bitcoin at the fork point.

1638  Economy / Economics / Re: Is bitcoin now the strongest currency in the world? on: November 09, 2017, 06:06:29 PM
After the events of last week.

I was making this suggestion to some folks yesterday, but they claimed that bitcoin is too small.  Does it matter?

I always think that bitcoin is the only currency wherein you can pay anyone in the world without exchanging it. Unlike dollar, where you have to convert it first before buying some things in other countries, bitcoin has the power to pay without conversion. We still may not say it is the strongest in the world, but it has a large possibility to take the title. for now we may consider it as a global currency.

Seeing as how bitcoin is largely useless for transacting day to day life, I don't see how this is true at all. Bitcoin has high utility for transfer; it can be transferred quickly and fairly cheaply (this is becoming less true as time goes on though) and to almost anywhere in the world, but the same can be said of the USD. The problem is once you transfer btc or the USD, you have to convert it to the local currency in order to be able to use it, and in fact, I would guess that the USD probably has far higher utility around the world for actual commerce than btc does. Far more merchants or service providers around the world accept the USD than they do bitcoin.
1639  Economy / Economics / Re: Wall Street Is Worried Investors Have Dumped Too Much Cash on: November 09, 2017, 05:59:04 PM
Quote
Wall Street, which normally roots for investors to pour their cash into stocks and bonds, is growing increasingly concerned that there is such a thing as too little of it in reserve.

Last week, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a research note that a survey of the bank's private wealth clients found that cash as percentage of their total investment accounts had dropped to 10.2 percent. That's the lowest it has been since Bank of America began surveying its clients on their holdings in 2005. Cash hit a previous low of 11 percent in April 2007. It was as high as 21 percent coming out of the financial crisis, and it has averaged just under 13 percent for the past 12 years.



INTL FCStone, the financial services company, said recently that cash in mutual fund portfolios had dropped to 3.3 percent, also an all-time low. And Citigroup's chief U.S. equity strategist, Tobias Levkovich, mused in a note to clients recently that steadily rising stock prices have compelled "performance conscious" mutual fund to go close to all-in on the stock market.



Low cash positions worry Wall Street. First, it suggests that investors, pushed by recent earnings gains and an assumption that President Donald Trump and Republicans will get some type of tax cut passed, may be too exuberant in their affection for stocks. And there are other signs of that. The price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 Index based on this year's expected earnings is nearly 19.5. That's well shy of the highest it has been, but it's still greater than average. The flip side of the cash position is how much investors have in stocks. According to Federal Reserve data, the value of stock market holdings is also at a record for individual investors, but that could also be because stocks have risen faster recently than other assets. Cash held by Americans is up as well, even if it's a lower portion of their total wealth.

Levkovich throws some cold water on the argument that we are back in irrational exuberance territory. A survey by the bank found that more than 60 percent of investors think the market is more likely to drop 20 percent in the next year rather than rise 20 percent. The survey also showed that while few investors expect a recession, similarly few expect the economy to grow more than 3 percent in the next year, either. And growth of index funds, which have to stay 100 percent invested in the stock market, could be driving at least some of the all-time low cash position.

But that may not matter. Even if investors aren't nearly as gaga about stocks or the economy as they were in 2000 or 2008, the low cash position could be a problem as it has at other times during this bull run. Cash positions were low in mid-2011 and mid-2015, points at which the market has stumbled. And funds trying to beat passive investors may be quick to exit stocks when they start to fall, sensing an advantage over index funds, which can't sell. When excess cash runs out, bull markets tend to stop charging as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2017-11-08/wall-street-is-worried-investors-have-dumped-too-much-cash

...

This isn't a topic I have much knowledge on. Does have a feeling no one holds cash due to the US federal government being $20 trillion in debt, with fears of the dollar crashing hard if the deficit inflates to a point where it becomes unmanegeable?

I've heard of cases where people put their money into gold, silver and precious metals during times of hyperinflation to preserve the value of their wealth. I can't say I know much about whether the stock market can serve a similar function of preserving wealth from hyperinflation. What are the chances that the recent stock market uptrend is fueled by investors looking for a safe place to store their wealth, in the event a collapse occurs?

This isn't a concern in the sense that too many people are investing in things that are alternatives to cash (gold, commodities, or hedges against inflation), but that the makeup of equity portfolios to cash positions is too high. Equity investments are NOT a store of wealth that protects against inflation or hedges against the downside of a market collapse. The concern in noting low cash positions is that the market is overvalued and in bubble territory, as people have irrationally committed too much capital to equities due to the prolonged bull market, and that because cash positions are low, any pullback will be exacerbated because there isn't enough cash on the sidelines to buffer a fall. Essentially, the problem is (or the concern, that is) that the stock market has grown too fast, and that when the momentum finally runs out, the pullback will be more severe than it would be if the stock market was growing at a more measured and sustainable clip.

And really, I see that as a perfect analogy for what's going on in bitcoin.
1640  Economy / Economics / Re: SegWit2x Called Off on: November 09, 2017, 04:37:33 PM
I think that we all are happy to see that those things become true, i was hoping that this fork got canceled, and twelve hours later it got canceled, it seems that i am a magician, lol. But yes, it is very weird to know that a fork got canceled just five days before it was going to be realized, i dont know why people didn't support this one, but yes, it was a terrible idea, and it was a fork.. We were going to lose a lot of money because of this one.


I am glad that it was eventually cancelled due to lack of consensus. In the past many weeks, there had been big and small Bitcoin leaders who expressed apprehensions about SegWit2x and some even carried some form of a protest online by wearing NO2x. The whole Bitcoin community is happy that things went well and that the voice of the many have been heard though it took time for that final decision to come down. So what have we learned on this another fascinating chapter? Well, they should always listen to the majority and should not be devising a plan even if it has no critical mass of support.
Please tell me what exactly you don't like the idea of increasing block size? This problem exists and we still have to solve it. Maybe next year. The miners think only about their profit and they are not interested in other opinions. You will agree with me that it is not correct. I'm afraid that it might provoke a more serious conflict in the future.

I think increasing the blocksize is a good thing. I was initially in favor of segwit2x, but the way they went about doing it was very problematic and potentially damaging. If they had instituted replay protection, the chains would have split cleanly and the side with the better ecosystem would have over time become the dominant ecosystem through market consensus. By not employing replay protection, they were attempting to force market consensus by essentially holding the system hostage. Anyone who didn't agree to their rules (which were NOT reached by consensus) risked having their mining power or coins devalued on a chain they were attempting to render inoperable by having the vast majority of mining power agree to support their version of the chain. In this way, they were attempting to strong arm everyone into their system because the threat of not going along would be two chains of vastly different value, and coins spent on one might impact the coins on the other. This chaos threatened the viability of bitcoin as a whole, not to mention the price. I think they ultimately called it off because people were starting to call their bluff, and a couple medium sized miners backed out, and they could start to see that the chaos would tank the price hard.

So while bigger block size is a good goal and something needed to be implemented, it needs to be done in a way to protect what bitcoin has already built. SegWit2x was not doing that, and they were not doing it on purpose.
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