A totally different mindset on bitcoin

[johnyj]

Well, no. A bubble is defined by the fact that most people do not really want the asset (bitcoin, or tulips, or whatever), but rather just hope to sell for a higher price  at some point. So it is bound to collapse anyway, whatever the asset is.

Why it is bound to collapse? Given enough money supply, a bubble can last for decades, everyone can sell at a higher price, as long as they can get new loan to finance their purchase

Based on your logic, there are plenty of fiat money available out there, the bitcoin price should not crash

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[johnyj]

Basically this. When people start using it to buy goods instead of buy/sell that's when we will see the platform level out. The problem now is people are over valuing their bitcoin and are starting to hoard them.

If everyone is hoarding their coins now, there will be no sell pressure, only buying order, the price will go to infinite

[jubalix]

yes, facebook, the internet and countless other inventions had an uptake 10% per year

The latest crash proved that people's mindset has not been adjusted to bitcoin at all  

In a traditional economy, when something's return is highly above average (e.g. more than 100% per year), people will start to believe this is a bubble, and sooner or later, this bubble will burst and the return will eventually fall back to a reasonable ROI, like 10% per year

This wisdom have fundamental theory support: In a world where capital is largely available, if some products' return is very high, there will be more and more capitals attracted to produce this product and increase the supply, and earning will eventually drop to the cost of the capital (loan interest). Means high return will never last for too long

But for bitcoin, it is totally different. No matter how much capitals are added into bitcoin mining, the total amount of coins generated per day will never change (and just get less and less). The added capital just increased number of miners and raised network difficulty, reduced the production of each miner, thus increased the per coin value, instead of decrease it like in a traditional economy

So, in theory, bitcoin's valuation model is totally different than any of existing financial/economy model, and the anticipation should also be totally different. The price can rise quickly and forever, if there is a limitation on how high it can go, that will be available fiat money supply

But why people are still shouting this is a bubble when they see the price doubled in less than a month? The old mindset still rules, they are not confident at all in this new technology

[johnyj]

yes, facebook, the internet and countless other inventions had an uptake 10% per year

Good to bring this up. Those things you mentioned are still in the stage of market expansion, after reach majority adoption, the growth will slow down, eventually the return will drop. This is very similar to pyramid effect, when the market is stil large, there will be exponential growth and gain

But bitcoin is again different. Even bitcoin reached 100% market penetration, people would still want more, since the demand for money is endless

[Francesco]

Well, no. A bubble is defined by the fact that most people do not really want the asset (bitcoin, or tulips, or whatever), but rather just hope to sell for a higher price  at some point. So it is bound to collapse anyway, whatever the asset is.

Why it is bound to collapse? Given enough money supply, a bubble can last for decades, everyone can sell at a higher price, as long as they can get new loan to finance their purchase

Based on your logic, there are plenty of fiat money available out there, the bitcoin price should not crash

Not everyone. For me to sell, there must be someone else to buy at least as much. If everyone sells, the price crashes. If everyone suspects many others are just waiting for the right time to sell, the ideal strategy is wait as long as possible, but sell just a minute before the others. This creates the crash.

[johnyj]

Well, no. A bubble is defined by the fact that most people do not really want the asset (bitcoin, or tulips, or whatever), but rather just hope to sell for a higher price  at some point. So it is bound to collapse anyway, whatever the asset is.

Why it is bound to collapse? Given enough money supply, a bubble can last for decades, everyone can sell at a higher price, as long as they can get new loan to finance their purchase

Based on your logic, there are plenty of fiat money available out there, the bitcoin price should not crash

Not everyone. For me to sell, there must be someone else to buy at least as much. If everyone sells, the price crashes. If everyone suspects many others are just waiting for the right time to sell, the ideal strategy is wait as long as possible, but sell just a minute before the others. This creates the crash.

This is speculator's mindset. Speculator typically don't have fundamental knowledge about the traded instruments, they only care about the price, so when they see the price dropped a bit, they panic sell

By the way, a good speculator always sell when price is still on the rise, so that he don't need to worry about the liquidity

[Razick]

The latest crash proved that people's mindset has not been adjusted to bitcoin at all  

In a traditional economy, when something's return is highly above average (e.g. more than 100% per year), people will start to believe this is a bubble, and sooner or later, this bubble will burst and the return will eventually fall back to a reasonable ROI, like 10% per year

This wisdom have fundamental theory support: In a world where capital is largely available, if some products' return is very high, there will be more and more capitals attracted to produce this product and increase the supply, and earning will eventually drop to the cost of the capital (loan interest). Means high return will never last for too long

But for bitcoin, it is totally different. No matter how much capitals are added into bitcoin mining, the total amount of coins generated per day will never change (and just get less and less). The added capital just increased number of miners and raised network difficulty, reduced the production of each miner, thus increased the per coin value, instead of decrease it like in a traditional economy

So, in theory, bitcoin's valuation model is totally different than any of existing financial/economy model, and the anticipation should also be totally different. The price can rise quickly and forever, if there is a limitation on how high it can go, that will be available fiat money supply

But why people are still shouting this is a bubble when they see the price doubled in less than a month? The old mindset still rules, they are not confident at all in this new technology

The huge increase in price was not sustainable, and it exceeded the real growth of value. I agree with you for the most part though; and by the way: If the price settles at $50 with a 5-10% monthly growth rate (my target/estimate), would still be a bubble by the standards of most other assets.

[Razick]

Hi Johnyj, just wanted to point out a few obvious things, some shortcoming in your argument. I would like to see this discussion develop and my response is by no means pissing contest...

ad 1. by in large you are correct.

ad 2. rules governing bitcoin production my be different than ones governing production of cars or tulips, but human nature is always the same. I still mine and own bitcoins myself, but after a while, if somebody offers high enough price I will sell. Why? Well since most goods are prices in other currencies, they come in handy. Secondly and most importantly like any miner I have a figure in my head which tells me how much $ I need to invest in electricity and computer hardware to mine 1 BTC. Let's say for the time being this is about $40 - $50 / BTC. As difficulty increases this figure will grow to $100-$120/BTC in the next two months and who knows what happens next. These figures are similar for other miners except for ones mining on ASIC chips or ones that have access to free electricity.

So what is someone offered to buy bitcoins from me for $1000? How about $10'000? I would sell immediately as my profit margin would be so huge I could not imagine making a better deal by waiting further. Sad fact about bitcoin is that there are some early adopters of this currency who sit in 100'000 + BTC accounts and hence every single one of them has the power to wipe out entire exchanges like mtgox. Should they be in a hurry to get some hard cash that is. Their entry price into BTC for them was sub $/BTC so... you fill in the blanks.

ad 3. value of anything is a function of supply & demand. As once one VP, from a company I shall not name here, told me: price is a balance between fear and greed. IMHO nothing sums up price psychology better. And it does not matter whether we talk about a price of a stock, bitcoin, sheep wool or whatever else.

ad 4. new technology? what do you mean by that? sure BTC has some very nice features, in face I like BTC. (So does BitTorrent.) Biggest feature of all is that it managed to survive to this point. I was very very impressed by the quick recovery after the crash two days ago. But... fundamentaly BTC trading is done by humans and there is no change there (yet).

I agree, the BTC price is kind of related to electricity cost. And that is a baseline, you normally get higher rate. There are 3600 coins generated per day and MtGox daily volume is at least 10x this amount, even all the mined coins are sold daily, it won't affect the exchange a lot. In a couple of months, when ASIC mining devices hit market at mass scale, difficulty will rise by at least 5x

I noticed that you still evaluate profit in dollars term, because you think dollar is a standard unit of value, this is a mindset difference. If you dig a little into today's money issuering mechanism and compare USD with bitcoin, maybe you will get less certain which one is the real bubble: At least you have to buy equipment and consume electricity to mine bitcoin, but FED just write a number of 0s in their account to create USD

A tricky question is: If someone just write some numbers in their account (say 10K USD) and transfer it to you in exchange for one bitcoin, will you give them your hard earned numbers in blockchain in exchange for these numbers created out of thin air?

When bitcoin price crashed, at least 400K coins were bought at 70-120 range, who do you think were buying those coins? Those people who writing those numbers 

I don't think electricity costs have nearly the effect of supply and demand. We are going to have 21,000,000 coins eventually regardless, and there will always be more buyers than mining alone can suppply BTC to.

[johnyj]

The huge increase in price was not sustainable, and it exceeded the real growth of value. I agree with you for the most part though; and by the way: If the price settles at $50 with a 5-10% monthly growth rate (my target/estimate), would still be a bubble by the standards of most other assets.

To match 1% of the daily 2.8 billion USD printing speed with daily 3600 coins generation now, each coin would worth $7777. When we are still in a price discovery mode, any kind of growth rate is possible, since there are plenty of fiat money out there and the number of bitcoin is always limited

[Razick]

The huge increase in price was not sustainable, and it exceeded the real growth of value. I agree with you for the most part though; and by the way: If the price settles at $50 with a 5-10% monthly growth rate (my target/estimate), would still be a bubble by the standards of most other assets.

To match 1% of the daily 2.8 billion USD printing speed with daily 3600 coins generation now, each coin would worth $7777. When we are still in a price discovery mode, any kind of growth rate is possible, since there are plenty of fiat money out there and the number of bitcoin is always limited

It is, but would require mass adoption on a greater scale than the already impressive one we've been seeing.