Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[xhomerx10]

Congratulations AlcoHoDL!

[jbreher]

and yeah I heard you updated from your shitty van to a nicer one

Don't you be callin' Bessie 'shitty' - them's fightin' words. I drove her for twenty years, because it was the vehicle that suited me at the time.

(not that you are living in it.. hahahahaha... nothing wrong with that)..

...down by the river

Another factoid I let slip a while back: At the top of the market in late 2017, I sold enough to buy My Personal Lambo^tm.  

I know about your mercedes or whatever it is.  

Perhaps we have a misunderstanding of the meaning of My Personal Lambo^tm. It is That One Purchase made whose attributes are rather ostentatious as compared to needs or requirements for an object of that class. It need not be an actual Lamborghini. Indeed, in my case, it is not any sort of vehicle.

Some of us are well into the divestment phase.  

Probably one of the first times that you mentioned that mostly "divestment phase" perspective of yourself.  

Again, not at all. From the same time frame as above: I have already stated that I have retired. Which means I need to fund my Lavish Lambo Lifestyle^tm* off my accumulated holdings. Hence, Divestment phase.

You are being a bit back and forth here... so you gotta admit that.  

OK, I will admit my role in this particular misunderstanding. Silly me for expecting that the trademark term on Lavish Lambo Lifestyle^tm would denote that the use of the term is tongue-in-cheek. Nay, other than My Personal Lambo^tm, I live pretty frugally. Always have. Which, of course, is what has allowed me to make the investments that have landed me in my current position.

I had heard that you quit your regular job a couple of years ago.. so anyhow, that still would not necessarily mean that you are "well into the divestment phase" of your BTC unless you choose to start to make such divestments.  

Gotta eat. That's gotta be funded somehow.

 BTC Dominance

 

Yep.

I was a bit struck too (or maybe the better word choice would be "awed"?), by the jbreher strategic placement of that unimportant metric.

'unimportant metric'
 
It's almost as if you are making my point for me.

[jbreher]

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

This is a very hard thing for the old school bitcoiner to accept.  And some will reject it outright. In fact that is why Roger Ver went the way he did.  I think CSW is an actual pathological conman, but I think Ver fell in love with a version of Bitcoin that he began to see as doomed, ironically as it began to become successful. But I want to put forth a couple reasons I think what you said above is important and inevitable.  

1.  The banking infrastructure  and concept is STILL useful.
2.  We actually NEED it.

Bitcoin, if it does indeed begin to serve the world as even a semi-niche store of value will grow to magnitudes of it's current resource usage.  And I am not going to crank the blocksize debate up again, but to put it simply we can either keep bitcoin validation decentralized and thereby enforce the consensus, or we can let it be taken over by a small minority, and end up with a digital panopticon that would make most fundamentalist evangelical's vision of the "mark of the beast" look like Monopoly.  The fight is over which resource use grows... and the market has, in some way against all odds, chosen correctly: Fees.

I agree with the market here and I realize the future is not what, even Satoshi, seemed to have seen.  Although Hal got it.  And WAAAAAY back then too...

I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today.

Actually there is a very good reason for Bitcoin-backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency, redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical for medium to large value purchases.

Bitcoin backed banks will solve these problems. They can work like banks did before nationalization of currency. Different banks can have different policies, some more aggressive, some more conservative. Some would be fractional reserve while others may be 100% Bitcoin backed. Interest rates may vary. Cash from some banks may trade at a discount to that from others.

That was a very wise man seeing the rise of Cash App, Strike, and Kraken back when everyone else was just wanting to figure out how to get around all the regulations that made it hard to play online poker.  Insert Ver's scrunched up face here as he foams at the mouth taking about PEER TO PEER CASH!!! AND I AM SORRY I JUST GET SO EMOTIONAL!

No one can stop you from using the chain.  Ever.  That is CERTAINLY one of the things that makes bitcoin a "zero to one" invention.  But if you really want to compete for the kind of VALUE that Bitcoin will command and REQUIRE for on chain transactions??? ...better get that business plan ready.  And there are some fairly smart folks out there with a good head start on you already.  Bitcoin is not replacing credit cards... Bitcoin is replacing FedWire.

If we want Bitcoin to be successful then this is where we are going.  And we should really be glad.  It might not look like what we all thought it would 10 years ago (or 7 or 3 or last week), and part of the reason for that is our vision is limited.  We get hung up, like Ver, on shiny things that look more important than they are.

That feeling you got when you did your first few Bitcoin transactions?  It's not going away.  It's just changing form.  And you are one of the lucky ones that got to experience that first.  Most people will have the much more ho-hum feeling of just watching the mover and shakers roll out the new world for them...

Personally, I'm pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize consensus progress as the subsidy declines.

-Greg Maxwell around the BTC all time high Dec 2017. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-December/015455.html

Happy Saturday!

Just to be clear, you seem to be stating that a future where transaction fees being $100, $1000 or even more per on-chain tx is a distinct possibility?

[jbreher]

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

**A little Saturday read inspired by your post... I will merit you, but I just dumped all my merit on Hal Finney.  You can't be mad about that right?***

[...post too long for quoting, body removed, click here to go to it...]

Happy Saturday!

Very good post, thanks.

I hope jbreher and the other big blockers read it (I'm saying this in a positive way, not intending to offend anyone...).

Happy Saturday everyone!

Read it. No offense taken. Found it insightful. Could form the basis of a serious discussion. But first, a clarifying question posted above.

[aesma]

Calling it a bottom !

[nullius]

#FinCENFiles – coming today at 1 pm ET and 5 pm GMT – exposes how money looted from government treasuries, scammed from pensioners, and generated through drug sales has been hidden across the world.

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews

Financial surveillance propaganda from a fake news source whose very name translates approximately to Eat Hype.  Don’t swallow it.

“If we don’t enforce a global banking panopticon, then bad people may steal money that corrupt governments properly looted first, take candy from babies in second infancy, and ZOMG! (—faint—) do other illegal things!  To keep people safe, we need more KYC, more AML, more dox, more freezing and seizing, more asking permission, more limitations on what you can do with ‘your’ (LOL!) money.”

Everyone is guilty till proved innocent.  Now shut up, send more ID selfies, and show the source of funds if you ever want to see “your” money again.

It’s kind of like the argument that all crime could be prevented, if only the whole world could be turned into a giant prison on lockdown.  Oh, wait...

We need more bottom pics.

At this Sunday rump session of WO, are you calling for a focus on fundamentals?  Your meaning is ambiguous; for example, that thing I posted yesterday evoked at least two or three meanings of “bottom” that I can’t be arsed to list.

However, if the dollar itself is overvalued tensfold, then bitcoin is also overvalued tensfold

The confusion of concepts required to produce this statement is remarkable.

The security of the network is now more than 10x higher than when BTC set price ATH end of 2017....

Wrong. The hashrate/difficulty is more than 10x higher, not the security. It doesn't take 10x more investment to attack the network than it costed in december 2017 because current mining devices are way more efficient (per $ spent and electricity) than back then.

^^^ This.

bitcoin price volatility expected as 47 of btc options expire next friday
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-price-volatility-expected-as-47-of-btc-options-expire-next-friday/

News of speculative instruments is worrisome, and another reason why news of more holders is exciting.

"Hal Finney" Sun, 11 Jan 2009

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and
becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world.  Then the
total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html

Don't rule out any pricing option, look what they were talking about in 2009.

Important clause highlighted.  He obviously wasn’t looking into a crystal ball and predicting that.

This is why influential people sometimes become wary of any type of “what if?”, thinking-aloud types of brainstorming in public.

[MFahad]

Calling it a bottom !

[nullius]

Savour the irony.

[— sticking a fork in rolling’s nonsense —]

Sounds like the kind of rant the bigblockers went on just prior to forking off. You are welcome to get out now and go chase another shitcoin dream. Bitcoin will be just fine without you.

You are the one throwing bigblocker “Bitcoin won’t scale!!!” arguments, only with the twist that you think that’s a good thing.  Or at least, a “hah hah, little guy, you’re just totally fucked—bow down to your masters!” thing.

My argument is people are idiots and the few who aren't will be priced out of the market by high fees.

Your argument is pie in the sky nonsense in regards to a fear of a future of bitcoin evolving in a way that squeezes out the little guy...

You have hardly any evidence of that beyond pure speculation, and why the fuck do you believe that bitcoin had adopted segregated witness rather than increasing the block limit size?  That is in order that little normie people can run nodes.. .Have you heard about that kind of inclusiveness phenomena that puts power of the chain in the hands of the people through consensus mechanisms?

 

Bitcoin scales just fine, you're just looking at it wrong. The highest value use cases will survive and the everything else will be done off chain or die, including your ideology. This is the free market I'm talking about.

Of course, there is going to be a combination of off chain and on chain.  Did someone send you over from the bcash nutjober camp to make these speculative baloney points?

The end game is bitcoin becomes the settlement layer for the world. Transaction costs are going way up in the future, you're not going to want to do on-chain transactions when it costs $1000+ to do so, but if you're settling a billions dollars, that's a tiny price to pay.

The fact is, whether we like it or not, very few individuals (other than those of us here) will hold private keys in 10 years. The transaction costs alone will ensure it.

Just to be clear, you seem to be stating that a future where transaction fees being $100, $1000 or even more per on-chain tx is a distinct possibility?

Nobody saw that coming.

[bitebits]

Indeed congrats AlcoHoDL, you deserve it. Keep on posting!

[BobLawblaw]

I can't find my laser dildo hat anywhere. Felt like putting it back on.

Feelin' kinda good lately.

HODL.

[VB1001]

I can't find my laser dildo hat anywhere. Felt like putting it back on.

Feelin' kinda good lately.

HODL.

[jojo69]

HSBC allowed fraudsters to transfer millions of dollars around the world even after it had learned of their scam, leaked secret files show.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54225572

[cAPSLOCK]

**LOTTA CAPSTYPINGS***
Happy Saturday!

Just to be clear, you seem to be stating that a future where transaction fees being $100, $1000 or even more per on-chain tx is a distinct possibility?

That as a possibility is implicit in my thoughts, I'd say, yes.  

I am not saying it's the only way forward for Bitcoin.  I also think a block size increase is possible, though may be hard to do from a political standpoint.

It kind of HAS to be one or the other of those things.  And if it is the former then it follows that transactions managed off chain will be how the majority of transactions take place.  Either as Finney suggested (though I do not see that the "banks" have to create a currency... they could instead just let you trade "bitcoin" on their private ledger) which is a trusted model, and/or using trustless models like lightning.  Or some other invention that is one or the other or in between...

[alevlaslo]

if the stock market falls before 2010, then bitcoin will also fall to 2010 prices 

[Toxic2040]

I can't find my laser dildo hat anywhere. Felt like putting it back on.

Feelin' kinda good lately.

HODL.

#stronkpipes

[BobLawblaw]

Many thanks !

[Last of the V8s]

Dirty money my arse.

[VB1001]

Many thanks !

I'm glad that you are better.
In www.wohats.com there are all the hats, not all the versions of each one, but in your case the laser is there.
Anyway, xhomerx10 sure has a backup.

[nullius]

Edit:  If you agree with the following appreciate the alluring redhead, +1 aesma.

Calling it a bottom !

Why the need for saccharine moralizing?  That nonsensical blue-checkmark sermon about “love” is the smug “liberal” equivalent of a stern “thou shalt not have lustful thoughts”.  Posting it in reply to that photo is sanctimonious preaching.

Man has always sought beauty.^*  And that’s a good thing.

A fifteenth-century Cardinal commissioned this Renaissance restoration of a Roman copy of a Greek statue.  Love the Renaissance!

P.S., protip:  Modern notions of so-called “love” are the wrong basis for relationships.  What you really mean is an emotional codependency of narcissists who have mutually duped each other into sexual congress.  It is more shallow than simple lust, but with the added benefit of an opportunity for hypocritical platitudes.  Confirmed science:  Vide divorce rates.


* Although some of the pics posted to WO are really not beautiful, that is only an argument for better quality.  By that, I don’t mean statues.  A major reason why I typically avoid posting... desirable photos of flesh-and-blood female humans is that this forum has “no-NSFW” rules.  I don’t like to play that game, or to wonder if something is too borderline, or to Bowdlerize things.  Whereas nobody who is not fucking insane could make a fuss about my beloved statues and paintings.

[AlcoHoDL]

New Legendary Hat in WO, in a few minutes, AlcoHoDL

+1sM

Congrats!!!

edit:



Done

Thanks so much VB1001, for giving me the turning merit, and to JSRAW for his kind generosity and good suggestion re. my Plausible Deniability Wiki! Big thanks to ivomm, xhomerx10, bitebits, and all WO brothers (and sister).

Almost all merits have come from WO members for posts in the WO thread, and that means a lot to me.

Keep on being who you are, and keep making WO the best place on cyberspace for all things, Bitcoin or not.

HoDL strong!