If things don't go well and bitcoin fails, so be it. It's not too different from people betting a few years of their lives on their start ups. If it fails, it fails.

are you suggesting that people should not do start-ups either? That the only way to live is to become a slave-worker until you're 65?

It is a gamble, like anything else in life. You're gambling that you won't get hit and killed by a car when you're going to work everyday. To say that you shouldn't work because there is a risk is just silly.

A person's risk tolerance depends on many things including but not limited to their wealth, their ability to earn income, their age, etc. Sometimes, because of a combination of factors, their risk tolerance can be greater than their net worth at that particular point in time. It's not such a difficult concept to understand, it just requires a shift in your thinking and getting out of this middle-class protect-my-wealth kind of mindset.

No idea about an exact amount, but I would say anyone in the top 0.1% of bitcoin owners can be considered bitcoin wealthy.

Because bitcoiners on average are probably slightly wealthier than the average population. So there are a bigger percentage of wealthy bitcoiners than just wealthy people in the general population, which I would put at less than 0.1%.

That's why it depends on the situation.

I wouldn't do it if I was 60 years old and near retirement.

I wouldn't take a $500,000 dollar loan if I could only make $15,000/year.

But if I was ~21 and just graduated from college, I have a decent say 60k/yr job, but no money on hand. I can live with my parents, and so my spending is virtually 0. Why not take out a $30k loan that I can pay back in a year, if it'll give me the chance to become a millionaire and retire by the time I'm 23?

People are wired to want to protect what they have. I am too. But it's not that rational if you really think about it. What's the difference between "losing $10" and "not earning $10 you could've earned"? The difference is very small. You're afraid to lose 10k or 20k, but I'm afraid to lose out on a potential 3 mil or 4 mil.

I mean if you have a happy job and you like working and being middle class, sure, who cares. But if you are miserable, want to have some freedom to do stuff you want to that can't earn money (say volunteering for example), it's the difference between a chance at achieving your dreams versus no chance at achieving your dreams.

Personally, there's no difference whether I earn $20k/yr or $30k/yr or $40k/yr or even $100k/yr. You basically have the same kinds of worries, and same kinds of restrictions. Sure, you can perhaps buy more expensive clothes and coffee if you make 100k/yr but there's no real difference.

The truth is, you can have blockchains without a bitcoin (or altcoin). How useful it'll be is debatable.  There was a really good discussion on this subject on AVC yesterday.

I understand you like bitcoin; that's why you're here. But your arguments are simply wrong. What intrinsic value does gold have? Absolutely nothing. I always laugh when I hear people say that gold has intrinsic value. If you're stuck on a deserted island, what can gold do for you? Nothing. You can make jewelry with gold, but you can make jewelry with a lot of things. Plus you can melt the gold back down, and make something else; it isn't completely consumed. Gold doesn't have any "real" use. Even silver has more intrinsic value, because it is used in a lot of industries.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, DOES HAVE INTRINSIC VALUE. I'm not talking about the "backed by mathematics" bullshit. I'm talking about the blockchain's potential use as a secure, public database. Look at how much money companies like oracle are making now. Larry Ellison is one of the richest people on Earth. Bitcoin could potentially provide a better, more secure database system than anything oracle can ever make. There are also uses for bitcoin's blockchain in terms of smart contracts and such.


There are REAL WORLD USES for bitcoin/blockchain, that's why there are VCs willing to invest in the space. Bitcoin is like the "fuel" of the bitcoin blockchain, and it is required to keep the blockchain secure. That's it's intrinsic value. If people want to use the blockchain, they will have to pay with bitcoins.

nah. There are times where taking out a loan isn't stupid.

I mean if you are young and can earn the money back in a few years, why not take the risk for a chance of complete financial freedom? The downside is limited, but the upside is almost limitless.

I mean what can you do with a few ten thousand dollars? Buy a car? Go on a vacation or two? That's about it. Nothing life changing. I'd totally be willing to sacrifice a few vacations and a new car for a good chance at becoming rich.

You're working under the assumption that bitcoins will work exactly in the same way USD or Euro or RMB works. But bitcoins could be a store of value rather than a working currency. You don't "spend" gold everyday, yet gold is valuable and continues to be valuable. There are many ways bitcoin could succeed, other than being completely a currency. That's not it's only use. If it was, most of the VCs and really smart people with money won't be here.

This is also true. I think some people on this forum has this idea that every bitcoin early adopter is going to be filthy rich. That's just not going to happen. There will be very few people who will make any significant amount from bitcoins (assuming bitcoin succeeds), and of those, most of them will be people who already have money like the winklevoss brothers.

The number of middle class people with the guts to bet a very significant amount of their wealth on bitcoin is not that high.

There might some people making a few thousands or a few ten thousands, and they might be happy with that kind of a gain. But the ones who make millions (not 1 million, 1 million doesn't do much these days) will be very few. I suspect that it will be less than the number of multimillionaires google or facebook made. Especially if we ignore the people who are already multimillionaires to begin with, and only count newly minted ones.

Quoted for truth again.

@Greenstox: That's not gonna happen. bitcoiners are not going to be any more "moral" than the general population. In fact, as we've seen, We've attracted many hackers and scammers and illegal dark market users so far.



@botany: Yep. There are more "new rich" now than there has ever been in history. Never has there been something like facebook or google that literally made 1000 millionaires just like that. We are living in the best time in history, although I do wish I was born about 200 years later. The difference would probably be like the difference between life in 1800 and now, maybe even larger because of exponential improvements in technology.

But if bitcoin really takes off and I have enough of them when it does, then I have no complaints

Doge is kind of silly, but your argument is even more silly.

Saying 100 billion coins is too much is like saying 21 million coins is too little. In fact, saying 21 million coins is too little actually has some merit, because people are psychologically affected and want to have more than 0.000003 of a coin.

I'd imagine the perfect demographic is a country with high GINI, very corrupt government/businesses, a lot of very rich people (possibly at the expense of even more poor people), high taxes, unstable government.

this dash/monero bitch fighting is really toxic to an otherwise promising investment in a niche that could potentially make a lot of money, if the right people become interested.

There could even be room for more than 1 anon coin to "succeed".

No one cares about "fairness" and "instamine". If they wanted fairness, they'd go communist.

No one cares about "shills" if the idea behind it is solid.

Stop all the useless ad hominem attacks and try to promote anon-coins in general so that as a whole, this niche has a better chance of succeeding. It might do you guys good to put 1 or 2 eggs in another basket as well, just in case.

Not true. If bitcoin goes to $10,000,000 each, you can bet there will be a lot more people interested in compromising it than if it was worth 4 billion in total.

So there will be a need for more miners when bitcoin is worth a huge amount than when bitcoin is worth a small amount.

Hard work doesn't mean too much by itself. I know people in China who are working their asses off everyday, for ~$100-200 dollars a MONTH. They probably work harder than 10 of you combined. Are they rich? Of course they're not.



The really important thing is knowledge, and having a correct understanding of how the world works. And then you'll need some work, hard work even, and a bit of luck, but you will succeed if you try enough times. As long as you have the knowledge.


Which is why IF Bill Gates, warren buffet, *insert most selfmade rich people here* were too lose all their wealth and contacts, they can probably become rich again given enough time. Perhaps they won't become as rich as they were, because they got really lucky the first time. But they'll be a lot better off than the average person for sure.

That doesn't mean anything. The point of mining isn't to get more hashes, it's to keep the network secure. If you can get more hashes, so can a person or a group of people trying to break the blockchain.



Also, the block rewards will get "insignificant" long before 2140; the difference between 0.0000001 bitcoins and 0 is not that big.

you can repeatedly explain a basic concept to some people 100x and they still won't understand. It's clear some people do not have the capacity to understand these numbers, all they can think is "it's too good to be true so it can't happen".

why does moneroinvestment.com say that the market cap of monero is 1.5 million in may 2015?

we already have the monero speculation thread... why was this thread made?

I've said before, but when bitcoin price doesn't increase as expected at the halving, perhaps it will decrease a bit because of people losing confidence or people who wanted to make a quick buck giving up and leaving.

I don't think bitcoin's price will go up slow and steady. Either something happens to catapult it way up, or it fades away.

So what you're saying is, if you guessed the lottery numbers correctly week after week, you could've made tons and tons of money.

I agree.