For me the biggest misconception is that it's "currency". At current level, there is no way to scale blockchain and preserve decentralization by having enough average users running full nodes. Even if you take some ridiculous block size like 32 MB, it still won't be enough to compete with banks. This is because users have to store all transactions that were made in history, so people are doing the same work as Visa does, but on their home computers, with very limited resources, and not getting any rewards for it. Maybe technologies like Lightning Network will the "currency" part of cryptocurrencies: https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/dear-bitcoin-im-sorry-fees-will-rise-b002b1449054 |
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Gold is precious because it's scarce and resistant, and Bitcoin excels gold in both of those properties.
Supply - there will be only 21 million Bitcoins, while no one knows how much gold there is on Earth or even in Solar system. Bitcoin is also deflationary, because from time to time private keys get lost, and it's unknown how many coins are already gone - most notably, people suspect that Satoshi will never move his 1 million BTC.
Durability - private keys/seeds can be copied and stored in multiple places, or even in one's own mind (12 words are not that hard to remember, if you practice it every day).
Basically, Bitcoin is much better store of value, even though it's limited to digital world.
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You are counting altcoins too, which is in my opinion not very correct, because it's very easy to create millions of marketcap "value" by launching new coin (or just ERC20 token) and trading it on exchange. Also, Bitcoin is the main cryptocurrency, and value of all altcoins is pegged to it automatically, because they are mostly traded against it, instead of fiat. And this 90-100 billion range is actually quite small if you compare it with classical assets, or even just marketcap of Apple, so there is a lot of space to grow. Basically, Bitcoin will either grow 10-20 times in next 5-10 years, or will crash for some reason. This is why it's better to just hodl if you are not an expert trader. |
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Money is a paradox. It's all fiat really, the value of tax levied backing (aka "the protection racket") or precious metal's chemical stability is all subjectively decided as valuable by the observer. It is useless. It's only useful purpose, as it is totally useless for any other purpose, is to be used as money. Anything that gets used for something real is useless money, because people will use the ostensible "money" for that useful real purpose instead. So the more useless some object is the better it is as money. For this reason, gold has been declining in it's usefulness as money since electricity and modern chemistry were discovered. Paper money fulfills this quality admirably; it's pretty much useless for just about anything else, really. Digital money even more so, it has only one possible purpose (at least cocaine users get one extra dubious use-case out of paper bills, lol, and no, plastic cards aren't actually digital money, smartasses!  ) Bitcoin takes this to a whole other level. It takes the uselessness and fetishises it. Digital central banking money is just so unimaginative in it's uselessness, they believed they could just create a networked database of counting tokens and the job was over! How hubristic can you get, they deserve to get their asses kicked by the king of focused uselessness: cryptographic counting networks. Which is all this Bitcoin thing really is, a huge counting machine, that's really really good at counting these usefully useless nothings we call BTC. There is no paradox and money is not useless. Money was established to be means of exchange, and different forms of money exist for a reason. Gold is one of the few noble metals, and all other noble metals (except silver) are too scarce and too hard to refine. Paper money is much more convenient to use in real life than gold, and digital money is the money of internet. Being a very suitable mediator of exchange is an "intristic value" of money, even if it's paper or digital, and without it we simply won't have economy and civilization. |
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I called around some stores to see if they accept BTC, no one has even heard of it except like 0.1% of people. Wait till people actually find out this exists...
Most people who have heard about Bitcoin are those who work in IT, finance and those who read a lot of news (mainstream media are covering Bitcoin sometimes) or have friends who told them. It's really hard to say how much of the population knows about Bitcoin, but I would say it's around 20-30%. Out of those people, only few actually own some BTC, as many think that it's a bubble, or it's just too risky. This means that there's a lot of space for growth, and Bitcoin can be valued at $50,000-100,000 if mainstream adoption will be reached. |
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Hey guys! Just want to double check if speculation and volatility is a problem for bitcoin?
Speculation and volatility is caused by free unregulated markets and relatively low volumes. Free markets are necessary for Bitcoin's existence, because mining is based on economic incentives - you invest some value in form of equipment and electricity to earn profit by selling your block rewards. Value of Bitcoin on regulated markets may not represent real value of Bitcoin on free markets, making mining harder to operate, thus disrupting the natural balance of Bitcoin. As for volume, it will keep growing and will make price more stable in the long run. |
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Looks like you can predict the price just by watching Google trends.
This is just a chicken and an egg problem. And it's clear that Bitcoin's price comes first, and than the google searches follow, and not the other way around. Bitcoin's price didn't increase because more people suddenly started googling "Bitcoin". You can't predict Bitcoin's price by watching Google trends, the market changes much faster than people's interest in Bitcoin. |
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Biggest threat to them especially central banks is bitcoin. These elite 1% of the world population have power and control over everything and i find it hard to believe that they will let bitcoin grow and overtake them.
Central banks can create unlimited fiat money out of thin air. Can they use that unlimited fiat money to keep buying all the bitcoin to drive the price up and when it is at its highest create a huge sell order to crash bitcoin and kill it off?
Is there any suspicion now or evidence to show central banks is buying bitcoin at whatever price with their printed fiat money for the sake of crashing bitcoin?
Bitcoin has to solve lots of technological problems before it will be able to really replace current financial system and handle all transactions by itself. And I think governments and central banks will be adapting and finding ways to regulate Bitcoin, without making changes to the network itself. It will depend on population whether we'll have only one type of currency, or if crypto and fiat will coexist. |
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But the point is, its quite surprising that these guys are owning a lot of bitcoins. I thought they are anti-bitcoin but then again cannot removed that fact that even lawmakers from this small country are into bitcoin. I also believed that this is just a tip of the iceberg and there are lawmakers that are not fully disclosing their wealth including bitcoins.
Imagine if a lawmaker from USA saying that he has stash of bitcoin somewhere worth in $100+ million, lol that will be awesome and another rating boost for bitcoin.
They are not "anti-Bitcoin", Bitcoin is in a grey area of the law in Ukraine, the recent crackdown on miners happened because those miners were leeching electricity and not paying taxes, so this could have happened in any other country (even though stupid cops and judge tried to add the whole illegality of Bitcoin thing to this situation.) Bitcoin can be a very useful asset in countries like Ukraine, because it allows to easily and even somewhat privately hedge against weak national fiat currency. Also, lawmakers and other rich people like to store their wealth on offshore accounts, and Bitcoin can provide the same benefits, but with lower costs and potential gains. |
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How do you define Bitcoin "going mainstream", and are you expecting good results?
If you mean "mainstream investment", than it probably will not happen on a large scale, simply because most people are not investors. Ask your friends who have heard about Bitcoin at least 1 year ago, why they didn't invest - they will answer that they didn't want to risk. In my mind, going mainstream means getting acknowledged by mainstream investors, leading Bitcoin to become as popular as gold. How do you define Bitcoin "going mainstream", and are you expecting good results?
ps. [Extra credit at ProfWigSlipper's University] At least one person will say "Bitcoin is so new we are looking at sustainable growth for many years to come". (Question) How well did that mentality/excuse work for people who invested in the Early 2000 dotcom bubble?
Worked out pretty well for people who invested in Amazon and eBay. Same with crypto - many alts will die, Bitcoin will recover and keep growing. |
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The question is quite simple one, have you ever regretted not gambling on an occasion? Like football matches etc, where you had a gut feeling of a team wining but you didn't bet? This happened with me in the recent el classico, i had a gut feeling of Real Madrid winning 3-1 but i just didn't bet. Smdh
There's an easy way to determine if betting is for you or not. Before some matches that you are interested in, make an imaginary bet and check the odds, then after the game write down your imaginary result. Then just look at your imaginary profit after some long period of this virtual betting, if you are in a good profit, than you can start betting with real money, otherwise you should learn more. If you are simply focused on your regret for not betting on correct predictions, you might be losing the bigger picture where you also have wrong predictions. |
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There's one very interesting and important difference between stocks and Bitcoin - BTC is traded 24/7, while stocks are traded only in certain hours. This means that time passes significantly faster for BTC, and this is one of the major factors why it is so volatile. This also means that you should be prepared for price changes while you are away from exchange, this can be done via built-in tools like stop-limits and even some advanced methods like writing your own bot with official API from your exchange platform.
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Let's just wait I see. Im sure miners will defect from the NYA agreement, Bitfury will be one of the first, and once one deffects, other will follow.
A lot of people have learned a lesson with the Bitcoin Cash disaster. Everyone that got involved in mining Bitcoin Cash has lost millions compared to if they kept missing the legacy chain.
Everyone involved in segwit2x will be responsible for the price crash. Imagine the amount of hate Barry Silbert, Erik Voorhees, Jeff Garzik etc will get. Let's just wait and see what happens after august 23th.
I don't think that those people from NYA are going to care about the hate, but it's likely that miners will back off from 2x fork, maybe not all, but at least half, probably. The real Bitcoin, developed by Core is very valuable, and this conspiracy to replace Core will sure crash the price, if it will have significant support from miners and companies. Mining Bitcoin will be less profitable, and mining 2x chain will be even worse, so why should miners fork if they are not gaining anything from it? Larger blocks would sure help those companies and miners, but the effect of price crash will outweigh any gains by a huge margin. |
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This is indeed [BREAKING NEWS].
Shit's about to get real.
It's a sensationalist clickbait crap. Putin himself didn't say that Russia will start mining Bitcoin, it was some of his advisers who said that he has a plan to start a large scale mining operation, and he even launched an ICO (which is kinda suspicious, because why would the government need private investors?). Knowing Russia's history with corruption, it's quite likely that's this is just another scheme to steal money while making a PR move. |
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all the talks about bitcoin in the media, being on the first page of financial newspapers, these famous characters talking about bitcoin, the speculations saying it will be $50,000, etc are all good and have helped this rise and helped "get the word out" but the main reason for this rise in my opinion is the end of scaling debate. we have had it for years and that has been keeping bitcoin back. imagine a spring that wants to be released but you keep putting pressure on it. as soon as you let go that spring will jump up to the sky. that is what happens to bitcoin  How is it the end if Garzik still plans to hard fork Bitcoin in November and over 90% miners signalling their support for it? I think it was a relief after August 1st that for some reason started snowballing, maybe because mainstream investors started getting in, than some good news from Japan to boost it further, more bullish predictions in mainstream media, and this all resulted in current bull run. I think the correction will be big, and we'll probably see some turbulence in November, but in the long run we are going to the moon. I would say 15-20k in August 2018. |
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I don't think we should advertise Bitcoin, because newcomers will probably have weak hands and contribute to volatility. When Bitcoin was dropping to below $2,000, social media were full on angry people asking why Bitcoin is falling and if Bitcoin is dead. Most people don't have enough determination to hodl for years, they check price every few hours like if they are going to day trade or something. Bitcoin should be promoted via educated posts and personal conversations, so potential investors can grasp on it's technical basics, and don't do some mistakes like holding coins on exchange, losing they keys and wallets, getting involved in ponzi's and ico's, and so on.
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While you are right in a sense, you must admit buying now at $4,000 is quite a big risk...
yes. it's pretty dumb to go all in now, especially since the rise as laid out by the op has not exactly been a slow and steady one recently. the buyers of the 2013 peak had a three year and more wait to get in the black again. i don't see it happening that long again but people should maybe be pacing themselves. Well, this is the answer to OP's question, people who try to invest safely usually don't want to buy during the bull run, they always think that now is the top and waiting for the dip, while in fact no one knows what the price would be tomorrow or in a week, we might go even higher, or fixate around $4,000, or drop down to $3,000-3,5000. This is why investors shouldn't care much about current price and try to day trade, instead they better to just hodl for at least 5-10 years. |
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dunno about the hundreds of thousands per minute part.
what does worry me is that it'll become the victim of another dotcom bubble that'll destroy the faith people have in it. once the smoke has cleared then it'll really establish itself just like the companies came out after the dotcom bubble.
there's a good chance greed will overpower any real uses. that doesn't matter in the long run, it does to people holding cryptocurrencies now.
Some companies survived the dotcom bubble and live to this day, and if we are in crypto bubble now, there's a good chance that Bitcoin will survive it, because Bitcoin has real utility and innovation. Also, there's actually not so much value invested in alts, millions of USD in their marketcaps doesn't mean that they've literally received those sums. |
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