... bitcoins are entirely intangible. The value is strictly determined by what people are willing to pay. Much more of a "So says we all!" sort of thing, which leads to swings from 2 to 260's, and back down to 50's in months. That works out to be a what, 13,000% growth, then crashing down to 20% of peak value over a week, and i doubt we have bottomed out quite yet.
BTC value should be determined by supply and demand. And all we know how hard to mine BTC nowadays. Recent price volatility is normal, because manipulators (sharks) enter the town and playing with the small guys. It was so clear that this sell-off was coming: (slate article written on just before the big sell-off, Forbes and Time enter the scene, CNN almost every 12 hours written new piece of article about BTC).
I think we're entering more normal phase now. Maybe a first time in history (at least for last 100 years) people are experiencing a free market. Really free: no regulation, no manipulation, no fraud. These new generation of ASICs will change many parameters especially difficulty parameter which is very important for small guys. I mean small guys as GPU miners no matter how big their rigs, they are still small when compared to cheapest ASIC design.
Another important point have to be remembered all the time: BTC and other cryptocurrencies and its markets will change all traditional technical analysis tools of old financial community. The terminology should be modified. Example: Overbought, oversold, profit taking, etc... These words don't make too much sense to BTC and its friends. But hoarding is a word should be carefully analysed.
Ok, where to start...
First off, in your first paragraph you talk about the volatility being because of
manipulators, and then in the second paragraph you talk about how it is a free market with no regulation or
ManipulationMixed signals there.
But a lot of regulation is meant to smooth out volatility, and make it harder to manipulate the market. It still happens, and often times the regulations end up going too far and just add more pointless work. But that is just a symptom of pencil pushers making more work just to keep themselves employed and because they think if they can make a rule for everything, then they can control human behavior(Wrong, btw, but that is another rant for another time...)
Second, you say that bitcoin should be all about supply/demand, in other words 'So say we all!'
there is nothing driving the price other than personal opinions, no outside factors at all. Which increases the volatility and leads to the massive swings we have seen, and will always see out of bitcoin in its current form.
Third, you cant just throw out every traditional technical analysis tool just because of bitcoin. A lot of those tools are based on human behavior and that isnt going to change just because bitcoin showed up to the party.
And last but not least, no one really knows what ASIC will do. It will make the difficulty skyrocket yes. The higher difficulty will increase safety against a 51% attack, but it will do nothing to stop people from manipulating the price of bitcoins what so ever. Meaning there will still be the crazy volatility.
But, when people that are only mining on a gpu get shut down because of the difficulty spike, will they continue using bitcoins, or will they just wash their hands of it? How many people are going to be willing to buy a ASIC farm just to support the bitcoin network.
If the mob starts buying dedicated ASIC hardware it will likely signal that bitcoin is around to stay, If only a select few buy massive amounts, it could well signal the end of bitcoin. The whole point of bitcoin is that no one owns it. If a relatively small group owns all the hashing power, the point is lost. And instead of the gov owning the system, it becomes owned by farm operators.
In other words, ASIC could end up killing bitcoin. Or it might make it a lasting thing. No one really knows.
And lets not even bring up the fraud aspect. (scammer tags get thrown around almost daily on these forums it seems like
)
Anyways... Too many people on these forums seem to think fiat is simply evil and should be entirely abolished. They seem to thrive on the idea of tearing down the system for fun. Or ""Rebelling against the Machine!".
*Snickers*
Simply put, it will never happen.
Both fiat, and bitcoin have their own respective niches. Both have their benefits and flaws, and people just need to understand both.
