People know the effect of the halving long before the halving actually occurs. If that is the cause then you would see the effect before the halving. Interestingly, Litecoin does show this effect. In both Litecoin halvings, the price rose sharply until just prior to the halving. Then, the bubble popped and the price fell sharply, and it continued to fall after the halving.

I believe that the actual causes of the Bitcoin bubbles are similar, but more general. News about the halvings or other events generates interest and promotes speculation, which which feeds on itself and slowly evolves into a bubble.

Finally, if we attribute the bubbles to what people believe about the supply and not the supply itself, then the bubbles have little to do with money supply and everything to do with demand.

"Metaverse" is just a rebranding of "cyberspace". There is nothing new about it.

This topic has been discussed many times. In general, any brain wallet that can be easily memorized is likely to be cracked.

Take a look at this thread: Collection of 18.509 found and used Brainwallets In that thread you will see phrases that look secure, but have been cracked.

Your phrase looks safe but maybe it isn't. Even if it is safe, how sure are you that you won't forget a single letter 50 years from now.

It is important to note that market supply is not the same as money supply. Bitcoin's money supply is fixed (or more precisely, on a fixed schedule). The market supply is not. It is not inelastic because there are different prices for different quantities, as seen in an exchange's order book.

Elasticity is not typically associated with money supply, although I suppose it could be. There could be a measure of elasticity regarding money supply vs. GDP , for example.

FYI, elasticity refers to the slope of the curve.

You are referring to the BetterHash and Stratum V2 protocols that give the hashers more control over what transactions go into the blocks.

Regardless, whether or not the hashers are working on the same block with the same coinbase is irrelevant. The basis of a pool is that if anyone in the pool finds a block, everyone in the pool shares the reward. If that is not the case, then it can't be considered to be a pool.

There is no difference. When a miner sells bitcoins, they sell to a buyer. There is no way for the market to distinguish between a miner selling bitcoins and a holder selling bitcoins. They are the same in every way.

Ultimately, I think the best metric is the inflow of bitcoins to exchanges. You would expect inflows to plummet by up to 50% after a halving. However, if you look at this graph, you will see that the last two halvings had no apparent effect on the inflow of bitcoins to exchanges. Inflows actually rose after halvings.

The change is tiny. 500,000 bitcoins are traded on exchanges each day and the last halving resulted in only 900 fewer bitcoins.

Once bitcoins enter the supply, they remain in the supply. The constant increase causes a downward pressure on the price as the supply curve slides to the right. The halving only reduces that downward pressure on price and it can't explain a 10x increase in price.

Post in the Collectibles subforum. That is your best bet.

The real question is why wouldn't someone buy the BTC in GBTC at a 24% discount.

One factor might be that traditional asset investors are less bullish about BTC than BTC investors, and BTC investors would rather hold their own BTC than let someone else hold it, even at a 24% discount.

Another might be that 24% is small in the long run, so there is little incentive to take advantage of the discount.

Since there is no redemption, there is no mechanism to ensure that the 24% discount will go to 0%. That makes it a risky arbitrage. I am playing the arbitrage game with the assumption that GBTC will be converted to an ETF soon, and so far it has been costly.

A block chain can record abstract data and signatures. With only that, an entry in the block chain can indicate a transfer of title from one entity to another. That could be useful if it removes the requirement of a trusted third-party to record the transfer. Whether or not the information about the title and its relationship to the physical world can be verified by the network is not relevant to this specific utility.

Your statements are rooted in a fallacy called an argument from incredulity. They state that something is not possible or not useful because I cannot personally conceive of the possibility or the utility.

On the other hand, there are strong arguments that support the claim that a block chain whose value is derived from something beyond its internal value is fragile. That is why many people believe that Defi block chains and even Ethereum are doomed to failure.

It's not typical. There is a two-year waiting list for that truck, and plenty of people would pay extra to get one earlier.

There is no reason to associate all-time highs with halvings. Bitcoin has repeatedly gone to new highs regardless of the halvings. The idea that the halving causes an all-time high is a self-perpetuating myth based on confirmation bias.

• The times between halvings and all-time highs have typically been very long. Only the 2012 halving was followed soon after by an all-time high.
• There is no correlation between halvings and all-time highs. There were two all-time highs between the 2012 and 2016 halvings, and two all-time highs since the 2020 halving.
• The 2011 all-time high occurred before the 2012 halving.

TL;DR:

The OP mined bitcoins a long time ago and has a wallet.dat (actually several) that may or may not have bitcoins. Synching the block chain is very slow. The OP wants advice on what to do to retrieve his potential bitcoins in the most effective way.

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If you mined in 2011, you shouldn't have to wait very long to synchronize with the blocks that contain your coins.

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

It's a weird response to the huge demand for their product. Instead of increasing production to make more money, manufacturers intentionally cripple their product to reduce demand.

On the other hand, demand for graphics cards for mining is very volatile. Perhaps manufacturers would rather sell fewer cards than risk committing to a huge production run that they potentially can't sell.

People are making this out to be some kind of miracle, but it is not.

Consider the Powerball lottery. The odds of winning it are 1 in 300,000,000, yet somebody always seems to win. That's because of the number of people that enter.

It all comes down to math. So let's do the math.

Let's assume that there are only 100 solo miners, each with 120 TH/s. That's a total of 12 PH/s. The total hash rate is 180,000 PH/s, so the probability of one of these miners winning a block is 0.000067. That is quite low; however, there are 52560 blocks each year.

The probability of one of these solo miners winning at least one block in a year is 1-(1-0.000067)⁵²⁵⁶⁰ = 3%.

It's low, but it is not a miracle. Furthermore, if we assume there are 1000 such miners, then the probability is so close to 1 that it would be a miracle if one of them didn't win a block.

The obvious benefit is that the involvement of third-parties can be reduced by recording transfers of titles with a block chain, as long as those third parties recognize the process as valid. An NFT can be used as a way to register ownership, so it seems like a natural fit to me. That doesn't mean it will happen any time soon, though. Governments tend to protect their economic empires at the expense of their constituents.

That's an odd thing to write because supply and demand are literally defined in terms of price (and quantity). I guess it would help to  define "price" and "value" and explain the difference between them.

For me, they are basically the same, except that price is a objective aggregate measure of value, which itself is subjective. In other words, something may have a price, but its value to higher to some and lower to others.

If you never sell at a loss, then you might never sell. If you never sell, then that implies that its value is 0, because you will never get any benefit from it.

You might not, but you can't make that assumption for all sellers.

And you can't assume that the buyers will pay whatever you ask. If nobody is willing to pay $40 for 0.000001 then you won't make your 1000x profit.

That is the only way someone could continue to sell at a fixed price regardless of the demand. You wrote "sell at a 2x profit", but nothing would stop the miner from selling at 2000x profit except demand. So, the bitcoins could have a value of $2000 if there is enough demand.

Likewise, if there is no demand for the bitcoins at $1, but there is demand at a lower value, miners would have to sell them at a loss. People like to claim that "nobody would sell at a loss", but that is simply not true. Lots of people sell at a loss all the time.

I believe that you are saying that the price of a bitcoin is somehow determined by the cost of mining it, but I have shown that it is not.