No one knows what will happen then, but every increase in price means higher demand which should lead to more stability.  At some point the price will likely be pretty stable, in the 500k-5 million range, since people will be using it for asset protection, transactions etc.

Either that or it will be nearly worthless.  To me, every year that bitcoin survives decreases the likelihood of the "zero" scenario.

Check out here, about 3 pages in:
https://www.oanda.com/register/docs/divisions/oc/risk_disclosure_agreement.pdf

Yeah, leverage is usually a very bad idea unless you are Warren Buffett and can withstand a huge drawdown.  You are right, the stupidity of equating it only to crypto is immense.

This is exactly right, I mentioned it to people earlier today, the question i had for them was how could one get the message you have above to him or to people around him.

Anyone who cares about freedom should be concerned that a head of state and billionaire could be cut off by banks, and censored on social media. Hence the need for things like twister, telegram and the like.  If he isn't safe, no one is and everyone should be terrified that they'll be on the receiving end of cancel culture if they step out of line.

Decentralized, censorship resistant apps are the key to protect everyone from totalitarianism or authoritarianism (socialism, fascism, communism etc) of any form.  

Bitcoin being the best example because if the products of your life can be seized at the whim of someone, your life isn't yours.

Agreed.

Bitcoin is the freedom for each person to use it as they see fit, making their own choices and their own decisions.  Bitcoin allows people to protect themselves from the looting socialists, fascists, communists or any other authoritarian collectivist.

What i would say to them is:  with a volatile thing like bitcoin, who would be crazy enough to gamble on the margin?  :-)  But you are right, don't invest more than you can afford to lose.  

Most importantly don't use margin in general because it is like playing with dynamite.  Margin with bitcoin is like playing with nitroglycerin, riding in a Jeep on a bumpy road while bees are flying in the vehicle.

They are right, you could lose all your money.  To me though, every year bitcoin has survived has increased the likelihood that it will be worth more vs zero.

Yeah, it is all over today, they said the same thing every time bitcoin had gone up since 2010.

Volatile, yes, but one long upward trend from less than a dollar.

The snowball effect.  Some selling which liquidated people who were trading using margin, which dropped it more, which liquidated more etc...

People buying using leverage got liquidated (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5308605.0 ).

Then people panic. This is and has been a long term hold, not a short term trade.

From the article linked above, it seems lots of people were buying on margin and then got liquidated causing more of a drop, liquidating more, until all the leveraged folks got taken out.

And you are exactly right about the real news.  Bitcoin is still above where it was last week.

And this is why drops are intensified, people buying on the margin and then getting liquidated when they don't have sufficient capital to cover their positions.  I am not sure why they think this is/was a smart idea, but I doubt people will learn anything from it.

Exactly.  Never mind the fact that bitcoin is still higher than it was a week ago.   The same nonsense which makes people panic and them missing the bounce, or panicking and not buying when it is low while waiting for "lower".  

Supply and demand.  Demand will remain high as long as the thesis hasn't changed, and it hasn't.

The kind of leveraged trading here, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5308605.0 , exacerbates drops.

Exactly, lol. 

The higher the fiat price so the larger the "market cap" the less likely that someone dumping X coins will move the market.

I wouldn't say it was FUD.  It is a valid point about printing fiat (and then USDT as a result) - assuming I didn't misconstrue what you said.  If your point was about governments massively printing fiat some of which gets funneled into USDT, my question is whether this is manipulation or smart people protecting themselves from potential inflation and other polices while they can.

If you have the fiat the fastest way is to buy bitcoin.  If you have marketable skills, then earning money and then using it to purchase bitcoin is reasonably fast (pretty similar to getting paid in bitcoin).  If you have products to sell, maybe you have a farm, or a manufacturing plant, you can sell them for fiat or bitcoin.  Mining will require miners which will require money to purchase and to pay for power.

The short answer is: what is the fastest way to earning money unless you already have money to invest.

It is funny to see that now a "whale" is:
"Bitcoin 'whales,' addresses with more than 100 bitcoin."

Over the long term bitcoin will do more for the pseudo-science of economics than has been done for economics ever.  The ability to track transactions, supply and demand, will provide ample ground for analysis.  Of course hopefully taproot and other improvements will provide additional privacy protections.

It would be interesting to know the stats, but it would likewise be difficult to get answers.  Few will feel comfortable disclosing that.

Obviously if you know the future then you can time the market.  No one knows when the peaks and when the troughs are though except in hindsight.  If everyone knew that $19.x K was the high, everyone would've sold.  If everyone knew the future, then they would've bought at $1.

Buying and holding is a great strategy for everyone who has done it so far.  Will this time be different?  Who knows except that EVERY time is different than the last.  This time institutional buying is more long term than trading, e.g. things like short term trading on Coinbase/Coinbase Pro/Gemini vs MSTR, Square, Galaxy, MassMutual, Guggenheim, and of course, GBTC (which is in turn owned by places like ARK, Kinetics, etc.)  From what I've read, these are long term holders looking for diversification.   Would they panic sell?  Perhaps, but much less likely than leveraged traderson any of the trading platforms or people in 2017 who were trying to make a quick buck and then panicked.  This adds stability to the fiat price and also decreases supply for sale which alone will increase the fiat price, let alone the halving last year, and the increase in demand.

Sure each time people were saying "bubble" there was volatility, but likewise each time there was an order of magnitude or 2 growth in fiat price and then it came down some, but nowhere near back to the earlier prices.  It then ended up retracing back to the next high.  

So if you know the future, time the market.  If you don't know the future, well, think about what really makes sense.

"The author must have missed some nice buying opportunities along the way." - exactly.  

Re the questions, seems click-bait-y to me:
1. Idiotic.
2.  Kind of dumb answer, he neglects that if these institutional investors hold long term, it reduces available supply, which when demand is constant or increasing, results in higher fiat prices.
3.  "...the concern can’t possibly justify the nearly doubling of Bitcoin’s price in 30 days."  Certainly not.  But the *awareness* of the concern AND the *awareness* of ways to combat the concern after 11 years of people poo-pooing the idea of crypto being protection certainly can.  Before someone flew, or a satellite orbited the earth, things were different and it changed only in a few hours.  Look at Sputnik for example.
4. He ignores elements of the "network effect" to make a point.
5. Fair point except the "may be divorced from reality" point.  It may be, but it certainly was "divorced from reality" between 2009 and 2016.

If Rob Berger had been as prescient as he acts now he would've had his clients buy pretty much any time between 2009 and June 2020 (or even through all of 2020 given the fiat price move since).

Is it a bubble?  Maybe.  I do recall though that every single new high - $0.30, dollar parity, $10, $30, $100, $1000 and gold parity, $2000, $10000, $20000 - was also called a bubble.  Every time people said it was a bubble.  Even dollar parity, because it was a "ponzi", "wasn't secure", etc.  Really, I think that there were at least 10-12 times when people have said it was a bubble that I've noticed.  It has been much more than 2 bubbles though.  Each time may have been a bubble at the time, but for longer term, it didn't matter.  Some people called the guy who bought the pizza for Laszlo stupid for doing it in payment for bitcoin because it was worthless - many others thought it was great.  (Now the reverse is true calling Laszlo stupid for doing it, but he is anything but stupid.)

Remember EVERY time is different than the last.  This time institutional buying is more long term than trading, e.g. things like short term trading on Coinbase/Coinbase Pro/Gemini vs MSTR, Square, Galaxy, MassMutual, Guggenheim, and of course, GBTC (which is in turn owned by places like ARK, Kinetics, etc.)  From what I've read, these are long term holders looking for diversification.   Would they panic sell?  Perhaps, but much less likely than leveraged traderson any of the trading platforms or people in 2017 who were trying to make a quick buck and then panicked.  This adds stability to the fiat price and also decreases supply for sale which alone will increase the fiat price, let alone the halving last year, and the increase in demand.

Sure each time people were saying "bubble" there was volatility, but likewise each time there was an order of magnitude or 2 growth in fiat price and then it came down some, but nowhere near back to the earlier prices.  It then ended up retracing back to the next high.  

I have said it before, but anyone who has bought and held over the past 11 years has done great.  Even buying during the $1000 bubble, or the $30 bubble etc.  

Likewise, each year that bitcoin survives makes it much more likely it won't collapse.  2010, 2011, collapse was possible, low in my opinion at the time, but possible.  With time, with each institution and each person involved that likelihood has dropped.  It is always still possible, but extremely unlikely now.

You are right, 2% isn't enough to make much of a difference to most people.  I think he (and others) just pull numbers out of their hats.