i never said anything about censoring out fiat lovers. i just said insult the correct category of people
HODLers in my eyes hold bitcoin. this can also mean spending some and buying more. but fiat lovers that just want to exit bitcoin soon are not HODLers

but as for "censorship resistant freemaket".. that would be 100% true if 100% of market trades were done OTC. these days its done on regulated markets cencoring out certain users based on location and wealth. and charging fees to deposit, trade and withdrawal. so i take the term  "censorship resistant freemaket" very losely these days

what the OP is talking about is not HODLers.. but fiat investors.

HODLers hold and want to keep bitcoin.. HODLers can even spend bitcoin. but they then get more bitcoin because they want to stay with bitcoin as their main currency.. what they have as their assets is majority bitcoin and not much fiat. and they dont wish to hold fiat..

but those only looking for a great time to exit bitcoin and be fiat rich are not HODLers

i think insulting HODLers is wrong. call what your describing by its real term and insult them.. FIAT LOVERS

though i do not like people using bitcoin the protocol and bitcoin the currency in the same sentance. id prefer people to say btc in reference to the currency. (or near future, 'bits' and 'sats')

the other funny conversational buzzword pet hate is 'wallet'.
a crypto wallet does not hold funds. it holds the keys to sign transactions to move the funds.
we should use a analogy word like a 'keyring'
or if the conversation is about the function of making a transaction.. an analogy of a electronic cheque book

but thats just going down the rabbit hole of the misconception that bitcoin shouldn't be a 'coin' but be bitcheques and mining should be the cheque clearing house.

but when interest is only 0.05%.. compounding it.. is a mega laugh.. its stil nothing
yet put the funds in a bank.
next year 1.0005
10 years  1.005011

10 year compound interest and they only get out $1.005 (banks would round down the sub-cent so its still only $1)
if you put $1 a year in. after 10 years youll have $10 plus.. wait for it.. 2 cents interest


so its still better to just buy and enjoy a loaf of bread now while you can afford it. instead of putting $1 into a bank and realising in 10 years you can only buy 75% of a loaf (inflation makes loaf $1.34)

---

as for those saying waiting for 40's for a bettr paid job.. well yea. $15k a year mcdonalds job. vs $40k career after training, promotions puts you in a better place than saving a bit of your mcdonalds wage per year

even if you stayed at mcdonalds and just took a inflation matching pay rise. in 10 years youll be at $20k
now if you know that bread at this year is one 15,000th of your salary.
and in 10 years at your inflated mcdonalds salary you divide that by one 15000th .. you have enough to buy a whole loaf. no gain no loss based on labour time vs loaf cost

which is why putting it in a bank doesnt earn you more. infact you can buy less by banking it. hense better to spend it.
after all if a mcdonalds job is $15k and you put in 10% salary ($1.5ky1... 1.545ky2...) even with interest it only amounts to mid $17k after 10 years with $44 interest,
you might aswell spend your 10% a year when you get it.
then challenge yourself to retain/get promotions to be in a $40k job by the age of 40. and tell yourself to just save 6 months of your $40k career salary when your older. which would be $20k
10% over 10 years is more than a whole year of your initial salary.. but only 6months of your future career salary...

plus ofcourse only getting $15k initially 10% is a big hit.. but when at $40k you can easily live your back to basics lifestile for 6 months(live with parents for 6 months) and put $20k aside

after all would you prefer to live 10 years with only $13.5ky1 13.9ky2.... or for just 6 months when your older living on only $20k

---

now to be more smart... invest it into something like bitcoin which year on year is better than 3%
2015 never dropped below $170
2016 never dropped below $350 (>200%)
2017 never dropped below $900 (>250%)
2018 never dropped below $5800 (>600%)

1. i dont say its price is LOW in comparison to the ATH. i see the price is LOW because it is floating only a thin film of bubble price (speculative foam) above value.

2. saying something is low is ok.. but saying it has CRASHED, which as we both agree is the wrong mindset of those that think the ATH is the norm.

3. i dont see a 25% built in speculative film of bubbles above value.
i seen a 200%-400% film of speculative bubbles above value last year.
i seen only a few % in this last couple months of speculative bubbles above value

4. last november value of ~$5.8k vs this year has changed. you just need to do the math of mining costs.
2017's ASIC batches were .. well ill save you the math. about $1.3k (simple math exahash *277)
november had the utility (point 1 of value indicator on first page) ramping up value due to the whole "segwitx1 locked segwit2x dead" that occured in november. this is where i pushed innovation into a gap away from the top 4 points. because once innovated it then becomes old news. so its more speculative than long term built in value of utility

even now segwit utility is locked but not many are actually using it. so not many actually would call segwit valued just yet.
(check the mining pools that strongly promoted and advocated for segwit like slush and BTCC who are not using bc1q addresses for their rewards)
(funnier sidenote i was begging bobby lee since december to use bc1q reward addresses to prove his confidence in segwit.. as of today still no(first chuckle).. yet bitmain. the opposition in many peoples eyes are using it(gave me another chuckle))

you can also chart in 2018 cost of mining using summers asic batch cost per btc (summers asic batch cost/btc simple math of exa *135)
its also worth noting that some pools this last month have been testing their 7mn next gen rigs (7nm next gen batch cost/btc simple math of exa *65)

wrong. price and value are 2 different things.
and dont use market caps.. just concentrate on price of individual coin. and then below that find the value by looking at the bottom line LOW of a period

value is stable and something that is mostly never dropped in PRICE below VALUE. (no one is stupid to sell for less)

..
anyways
check the minting/mining cost of coins. you will see where the variance of PRICE vs VALUE (roughly) when comparing 2 alts of similar utility/function.

PoS coins cost literally nothing to create new coins as rewards... so PoS coins will always be lower than PoW coins of similar utility/function.
EG if there was litecoin PoW and litecoin PoS.. the PoS would be less in value even if there was equal utility

when i look at the PRICES of coins. i do not look at the ATH. i look at the LOW
i draw a line from point to point of a periodic ATL and i treat that as the VALUE line, made up predominently by the top 4 catgories in my first reply of this topic. the volatile price above that line is the speculation/hype

and right now the PRICE is right near VALUE meaning a great time to buy. because with costs of mining/difficulty going up value will go up. meaning the price will go up even with little hype happening. .. and then during times of speculation, the price will spike up further and be way above value.

take november 2017-february 2018 VALUE was steady above $5k but the PRICE was volatile all the way up to near $20k

value of stamps is not sky high. you admitted it yourself they have no value.... however the PRICE is high

value and price are 2 separate things.
th price is high because people speculate, get emotional. but a price is not a set thing . prices can go down.

value is something that is more stable and is usually below price because speculation pushes up the price above value..
when speculation drops and the price drops too low. even below value. then the price is deemed as "undervalued"

also please stop over using the term commodities. atleast learn what these words are truly defined as first,
again for the multiple time. a commodity is a raw material used to create other products.
oil=plastics/fuels
wheat=flour/bread/cereals
gold=jewellery/electronics.

i know you feel bitcoin is digital gold. but that does not make bitcoins utility the same as gold. bitcoins values are only of golds values in relation to gold ALSO sitting in the ASSET category.

gold comodity market = to be used by industry
gold asset market = to be used to hold value by its owner, held and secured for investment/future sell

overall i would agree.
when it comes to corporations private networks. they are beginning to use the term DLT (distributed ledger technology) so even corporations are in agreement to want to define their closed networks as something different to open networks(blockchains). but yes i still see some corporations closed networks still defining thier centralised networks as blockchains. but its good to see some corporations are making good definitions to separate themselves

blockchains and cryptocurrencies are different. because a blockchain is the format of the data and how it is distributing the database/ledger
cryptocurrency is the data inside the database/ledger being financial.
for instance a blockchain could be used idendity/medical records. so although it uses blockchain/DL technology the data is not a currency, so the data and the database/ledger have nothing to do with currency, thus should not be defined as cryptocurrency

also people are now starting to move to the bitcoin token units of 'bits' (100 sat) which will reduce the confusion between bitcoin protocol and bitcoin token unit of currency

but in a world of billions of people there will always be misundertandings of these words.
even now after hundreds of years when people hear the word "dollar" they still think there is only one dollar and that its related to america. they dont think about australia or canada or other countries unit of account of the same name. we just have to kep trying to educate people until the majority us the terms correctly

studies have shown that people naturally trust certain names. i have seen some customer service reps of businesses use pseudonyms like jake, josh, james. instead of their real names due to these studies

for instance in western countries having a middle eastern name turns people off. yea its racism but when people get a phone call from someone with an indian name.. the instant stereotype is that its a call centre trying to sell something so the person receiving the call instantly gets defensive to think about how to politely hang up and not buy the product.
if the name of the contact sounds african, then people have a pre conception that its a nigerian prince scam

if the name of the contact has a double barrowed surname that sounds like they went to Oxford UK. then people will think they are educated.

so in short yes scammers try to use names that appear to be of trust
religious people that want to have their children to have a pre conception by others of being religious name their kids by biblical names.

and to be frank (saying things as they are no matter who might get offended) studies like that influenced my choice of my bitcoin pseudonym

the highschool lessons of just supply vs demand is a foolish notion. anyone just spouting the words "supply vs demand" has not thought about it in detail

prices are not set by supply and demand.
lets take 4000 bags supply of dogs mess bags... and zero demand.2 known stats. but i can still market and publish a bag for any price i want. so if i said $2. then boom.. thats the price. supply and demand does not set a price. price can set the demand
demand could rise and i actually make sales.. but demand does not mean my bags increase in price.i could continue to sell my dogs mess at $2 to 4000 people.
as for supply the 4000 people could re-sell it at $1 per half bag weight. thus forever as it gets divided up could continue to sell it at $2 pr whole bag, even when the units of supply multiply and demand/supply grows.

its peoples desire, and peoples decision to sell for less or more. and thats based on what they feel they could do with the bag. and how they feel if it can influence or add value to peoples lives by what it can do. for them
yes if there is a demand. then that can influence the price to go up. but demand can also make the price go down

imagine a phone manufacturer is going to make 1million phones. before even knowing how much demand there will be. they have calculated it cost $33 per phone and set a retail price of $100
now imagine one month they sell one 12th of phones because the demand is on 12th of a million people want it that month.

the retailer could say. wow there is demand. i could push up the price and make more money.
the retailer could also say. i could lower the price because i still have eleven 12ths of stock that was bought for $33million and i have made $8.3m and i need to get rid of this stock before the next gen phone is available. meaning i only need to make $25m on 833k phones to break even. so ill market and price the phones at $30 just to get rid of stock.

and now the price can effect demand by seeing more people buy it in month 2 due to discount. thus price creates demand rather than demand creating the price.

suply and demand can influence the SPECULATION/hype price above value. but there is always an undrlying value of something if people find it useful.

EG bitcoins value of december 2017 was about $4k-$6k but peoples emotion and speculation made a bubble that hit near $20k

TL:DR;
summary, follow the hashrate and mining costs
ask yourself when do you think hashrates will be around >300exa

...
in 2013 the price jumped 10fold to an ATH . this was due to the overhype of certain things after new mining equipment triggered the rise.

after the 2013 peak it corrected down to at that time truer value due to the hype cooldown after mtgox.
prices went to $250(mtgox bottom) .. $400 and slowly moved to $600 'value' over the 2014

let me explain why
although the hashrate jumped by 200fold. oct 2013-august 2014
the COST to mine actually got cheaper. thus underlying value pulled down value from
oct 2013 GPU mining the network hashrate of 1 terra... costing $1kper btc
aug 2014 ASIC Gen1 mining the network hashrate of 200terra costing $225 per btc

even up to november 2015 the hashrate was still only double that of august 2014.. bringing underlying costs to near $500 per btc

so  that explains why there was a slump in 2014-2015 as asics got more efficient there was not much movement of the prices caused by a surge in mining costs. as there was no surge in mining costs  just a gentle increase as the balance between hashrate rises and asic efficiencies grew at a slow pace.
and no big drama speculation so prices remains low and near to the underlying value of botomline cost support
.....

but then came the terrahash mining generations which made the hashrates move up and also with the block reward halving caused the costs to rise. and underlying costs of 2016 came back to the realm of $1k per btc

...
and now in mid 2018 the underlying costs of mining are $6k per btc.. at 40exa

..
now although it only takes a 4fold hashrate(meaning 160exa) jump to bring S9(14thash) asics mining cost of btc to $24k..
 
new gen asics are just being released which counters todays state/forcast

the next gen where for the same electic and equpment value. the hashes can do about double the hashrate. meaning the hashrate has to be above 320exa to get the underlying costs/value to $24k if all asics are the new 7nm asics just being released now.

...
and so ill let you all now forcast the underlying value which for the last many years has been predictable to see the "bottoming out" support area no one wants to sell below.

but sorry no one can predict the next ATH caused by hype/speculation and emotions which can push prices above value sooner/higher than normal/progressive/natural value incline

good day to you all.

hashrate went from 7terra to 50terra in 1 year
at that rate it will be in the 350exa within a year
also note hyp/drama/speculation could bring the price spiking and correcting up and down within that time. but underlying value becoming $24k could be within the year

   Unit of value- The unit of value in bitcoin is called the same as the system it uses, bitcoin. so commonly people call the unit of value BTC to avoid confusion in conversations . a single BTC can be divided up, the smallest division of a BTC is called a satoshi which is equal to 0.00000001 btc, which is very very small.

    Transaction– transactions are a part of bitcoin where you can send others BTC in exchange of stuff. sending transactions can take time, so to incentivise miners to include your transaction into a block sooner, you should add a competative transaction fee to the transaction for the miner. otherwise miners may choose other transactions first and delay you transaction or not include it at all.

    Energy for mining-nowadays bitcoin mining is not cheap to startup for a single person. Even if u try to go for mining using the latest effiecient equipment. you should not expect to break even very soon, to be the most successful and sustainable you should you need a farm(mutiple pieces of ASIC equipment) for mining and it will need a lot of energy ,i think to make it profitable you need the latest effienct hardware and cheapest constant source of electric


Supply-A successfully mined block is awarded with 12.5btc per block since 2016. bitcoin block rewards gets halved in every 4 years .So in the year 2020 when a block is mined the reward will be 6.25 btc.
because miing blocks is such a big task many miners 'pool'/syndicate their efforts together with others in certain groups called pools. and they share the block rewards.

Wallet-BTC are on the blockchain and are authorised to change ownership(be spent) using a unique sets of words ,letters and numbers called a private key. a wallet stores your private key for you to sign a transaction. you need to kep your wallet/privateky safe from other people to keep your BTC safe

Bitcoin is a digital cryptocurrency and a payment system which was invented by satoshi nakamoto and a group of programmers. Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 and later given as a software in the year 2009 .This system runs on a peer to peer connection and the transaction occurs between sender and the reciever there is no central corporation managing the funds. .Transactions are verified by the nodes and the history of all the transactions are available in the public ledger digital called blockchain.

Bitcoin is the first of its kind in the digital cryptocurrency. Bitcoins are created as a reward to people with special equipment called ASICS, in a competition in which users who are called miners offer their electric and special ASIC equipment costs to verify and record bitcoin transactions into batches of transactions called blocks. which link previous blocks to the latest block in a chain. hense the entire record of transaction data is called the blockchain.



ok i tried to not obliterate your entire paragraphs. but i hope this helps.
also dont bother mentioning "market cap" as its a meaningless measure which any new ICO can obliterate by making a trillion coin and sell one coin for just a dollar.
so concentrate on its features and benefits. not meaningless numbers that are backed by anything

ive been around since 2012 and seen him have serious sides and comedy sides and crazy sides.

i remember his good work he done with the satoshi outpost donations. which looking back on it. the donations i put through his managed campaign to the satoshi outpost. at todays prices well some of them hungry people may now have regretted eating sandwiches worth over $1k at todays btc prices

to me i just take him as a human being with many faccits.  but ultimately he is just a human.

i dont see him as a executive suit wearing guy. (well the image in the OP from a convention a few years back gave me that impression), but i dont think he is 'bat chit crazy'..
more so just a free spirit that doesnt care what people think and isnt easily an ass kisser

in order of importance of "value"

1. The utility of the currency, and how easy it is to use and store.
2. Energy put in in the form of electricity to secure the blockchain.
3. Blockchain difficulty level.
4. Limited Supply and supply/demand.

5. Innovation.
6. Perceptions on its value by the public.
7. Price of Bitcoin.
8. Media.
9. Investors.
10. Market dilution.
11. Confidence in traditional systems.
12. Legal/Governmental issues.

i say this because. my dog only goes to the toilet 2 times a day. and as it gets older it will become less.. in its life it will only do 4000 doggy bags of mess..  so scarcity/limited supply is 4000 bags,,,, now would that make you want to buy it for more than $2m a bag.. no?

thats because you dont know and have no USE for it once you have it.

next even if you know that my dog can easily do 2 bags of dogsmess a day, it will be mor difficult for my dog to go toilet as it gets older.. will that make it more or less value? no?
well thats because you still dont know what to do with it after and the cost to create the doggy bag of mess was just a bowl of dogfood hours earlier befor digestion.. so its not worth $2mill even if you know it cant just poop on demand when required, and know it will get harder to produce

but if it cost $2m to create and there was no other way to create it for less.. and it had utility. that nothing else could rival.. then you would buy it because it does something and you know you can get your money back because someone else will find it useful.

now thats the underlying value..
lets say thats the $5.8k bottomline of the last 10 months.. the bit ontop that is volatile that makes the PRICE go from $5801-$19-500  is th speculative bubblle of points 5-12

obsurd thing is. luke JR ruled out 2mb legacy blockspace, saying its due to it causing a mandatory hard fork... but
then in summer 2017 luke was directly part of the mandatory fork of threatening pools with banning nodes and rejecting blocks unless they adopt segwit.

luke also likes the idea of changing the algo. and also mssing more with block limits by actually reducing them..

core devs are hypocrits when thy dont first get their own way.
but hey pople will still love those paid by BSCARTEL people.. coz they the kings and btc needs its monarchy

yahoos japanese subsiduary. bought 40% of a crypto exchange BitARG

the only thing is bitarg has only done 1000 trades in 4 years. so it was a cheap purchase price for yahoo to buy a large stake in bitarg.
now yahoo will ramp up the trading engine and by 2019 re-release bitarg as a bigger proper exchange.
yahoo has not said it will integrate bitarg into the yahoo brand. so i suspect they will just keep it as a side service and just take profits from th trade order fee's

ignoring the btc "price" (that spikes and corrects) there is underlying value (support/sell resistance) made up by mining costs and then can vary based on Hodlers cost of obtaining and the value they are willing to set as their break even/bottomline.

this month the mining costs are above $6k. which helps keep bitcoins price at a certain level as pools wont sell for less than costs.

calculations
hashrate ATH 68,931,000   terra hashrate
4,923,643   asics used
$6,387.51   hardware per btc
$4,103.04   electric per btc
$10,490.55   cost per btc

last 3 day average is ~50thash
50,000,000   terra hashrate
3,571,429   asics used
$4,633.26   hardware per btc
$2,976.19   electric per btc
$7,609.45   cost per btc

3 day low is ~45742000
45,742,000   terra hashrate
3,267,286   asics used
$4,238.69   hardware per btc
$2,722.74   electric per btc
$6,961.43   cost per btc



changing to PoS is moving to a mechanism where by it COSTS NOTHING to validate a block.
EG if you stake 1btc. you dont lose 1btc to validate. when you get the reward.. you get the reward and can get your 1btc back out..

which means a PoS validator will make profit selling that reward at ANY PRICE, including a penny.
now imagine if all PoS validators in 1 day decided to sell their coin at any price.
thats 1800 coins a day willing to be sold for under $6k. and each day this repeats.

looking at the charts of most exchanges selling 1800 bitcoin would drop the price by $200
and if this continued each day. thats a drop of $1k a week give or take other factors.

and even if the price is decreasing PoS validators would happily keep selling down the pric point. even to a penny.

..
so PoS validating is stupid as it erodes the underlying value.

..
also PoS does not mean validating becomes decentralised.
because while a few million coins are locked in exchanges.. the exchanges could separately  state millions of addresses with 1btc and thus chances are exchanges validate  most blocks and exchanges keep the rewards.
..
as for moving to a different PoW algo. thats not changing much. it just means for 6 months the difficulty DROPS. and solving blocks takes longer thus ruining and tarnishing the consumer experience of using bitcoin.. where by it takes a few difficulty adjustment cycles to find the rebalance after many fortnights/months of delays.
and by that time chip makers could have re designed a new ASIC and rebooted the mining farm of new asics. thus solving nothing

i have not read the article. but i predict its just a randomly chosen number with no math or logic used why below $5k was chosen for late august-early september

edit:
now read it. and yep no one in august had a reason to say drop to $5k
the article did however with unsurprising hindsight of being able to look back in time... looked back to junes sub $6k.. and then
picked a person who before that (in May) asked for a $5k price..

in hindsight anyone can then pick a historic price and then find a person who before the price, got close.....
summary.. a boring article that predicts nothing but makes it look good by quoting the past

firstly this move to ~$7k is not a big deal and i dont deem it a whale manipulation..
i think some newbs need to look at bitcoin history and see that bitcoin always sways in movments of 10%'s where other forex markets may only sway 1%'s. check google type in "bitcoin is volatile" and you will see its normal. and something people need to get used to. learn to enjoy the natural waves.

anyway.
no one can predict the next ATH tsunami but the underlying waterline can atleast be somewhat measured

the btc price is made up of 2 elements. 'cost of obtaining'(value) and then the bubbly speculative hype above that.
forgive my crude ascii art
  /\
 /  \
/    \   /\/\/\        /\        /
       \/        \/\/\/  \/\/\/ _
                _______----
____-------

earlier this year we seen the correction from the big tsunami of the speculation hype bubbles. but underlying that sellers were selling and the new buyers were setting their new limits. and more importantly miners were increasing the hashrate (thus the cost of mining) is always on a steady slope up.

august was a period of $6k+ mining costs. and with hashrates moving up the mining costs move up. and thus the underlying cost of obtaining support line moves up.
since november 15th 2017 until now. all the traders with coins bought below $6k has had ample chances. and ample panic attack oppertunities to sell at $6k. so with mining and traders treating august as $6k support. its now time to move forward.

the majority of coin holders no longer are willing to sell below $6k
no one can predict the next ATH but looking at the overall longer term bottom lines of support. and knowing its based on cost of obtaining limits (a line no one is stupid to cross below because they will lose) as coins swap hands that underlying line moves up which suports a price movement up even when there is nothing to speculately hype about.

yea there may be very temporary dips and blips because some people are stupid. but the gap between the underlying value and the 'price' is small and a good oppertunity to buy before the hype bubbles of speculation create new larger waves and the global warming of mining raises the underlying waterline of bottomlin support