JorgeStolfi
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March 05, 2014, 02:10:03 PM |
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Bitcoin does NOT need to win the lottery or have some exorbitant pay off in order for it to be of considerable value. Actually, even if bitcoin maintains its value flat, it is doing a heck of a lot better than the dollar b/c the dollar is inevitably programmed to shrink in value due to dilution (too much expansion of the supply).
Sure, cash under the mattress is definitely a bad investment. On the other hand, the stock of a good company usually has a positive net expected value, typically around 5% of the price plus inflation. So, you go wrong in a couple of respects regarding your bitcoin/lottery discussion, the first, as referred to above, is the anticipation that some major payoff is needed in order for bitcoin to be successful.
When I started paying attention to bitcoin, a few months ago, one of the two main "selling" points used to convince people to invest in it was the demand/supply argment, ostensibly proving that its price would rise to six figures or more when, at some not too distant future, everybody starte using bitcoins. (A few days ago someone posted a photo of a projected slide showing such numbers for various scenarios, ending with "investment/pension funds keep their capital as bitcoin" and some astronomical number beside that.) And in this thread, the "hodlers" apparently still believe in that math. There were (there are) several things wrong with that argument, the main one being the implicit assumption that cryptocoin = bitcoin. A year ago, the salesman could jump from "cryptocoins are so nice that everybody will want to use them" to "bitcoins will be used in X% of all e-payments" without people noticing the gap. Back then, altcoins were only a theoretical possibility, which was dismissed by claims about the "Network Effect" and "First-Movers Advantage". Well, since then altcoins became a reality, did not fail as predicted, and some of them seem to be strong competitors to bitcoin. One thing that bitcoiners missed is that any "Satoshi" who creates an altcoin can make a lot of money by selling his pre-mined coins at the right moment, even if the coin flops later on. Clearly the Network Effect and First Mover Advantage weren't strong enough to counter that "Copycat Advantage". Moreover, some altcoins do have some advantages over bitcoin, such as faster processing, democratic distribution of pre-mined coins, or a lethally cute puppy face. Anyway, now bitcoin salesmen cannot do that jump any more. They must keep saying "cryptocoin" instead of "bitcoin" all the way to the final demand/supply formula. But since the supply of cryptocoins is infinite, not 21 million, the conclusion will be that "when cryptocoins are used to their full potential, the price of a cryptocoin will be at least zero." In other words, that demand/supply argument just went poof. The sad fact is that now there is no argument or statistical analysis that will justify any claim about the value of a bitcoin in that ultimate future. It definitely may be zero, even if cryptocoins succeed beyond all dreams. The other aspect that you go wrong is to expect that any investment in BTC has to be for a predetermined number of years. Markets have inevitably shown that investors are capable of playing their investments by ear and to go with the flow with whatever the investors perceive to be best to provide them with an acceptable return.
That is a very different "market", namely the speculative investors who aim to make money by buying and selling as the price changes. Indeed, because of its high volatility, bitcoin may appeal to those speculators who believe that they are smarter than their peers. However, short-range speculation is basically a zero-sum game. In practice, it is a negative-sum game, because of trading fees and time wasted. So, the expected value for a randomly chosen speculator is negative, like that of a lottery ticket. And, anyway, that use is not what cryptocoins were invented for. One thing that the world does not need is another financial instrument for speculators to play with.
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"There should not be any signed int. If you've found a signed int
somewhere, please tell me (within the next 25 years please) and I'll
change it to unsigned int." -- Satoshi
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ChrisML
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March 05, 2014, 02:12:39 PM |
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It's like the Devils playground at the moment.
EDIT.
Thanks Jorgi. I've only read the first 2 lines. Wall of words is much, much so.
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JorgeStolfi
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March 05, 2014, 02:18:48 PM |
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I am not aware of any investment with an expected value that is positive in real terms (inflation-adjusted).
A stock that is well-supported by fundamental data should give several percent return above inflation. To the extent that inflation can be predicted over a certain time span, loans at a fixed interest rate can do that too. Cattle seems to be a lucrative investment here (investor buys a calf and lets a farmer do the rest).
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roslinpl
Legendary
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Activity: 2212
Merit: 1199
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March 05, 2014, 02:21:15 PM |
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It's like the Devils playground at the moment.
EDIT.
Thanks Jorgi. I've only read the first 2 lines. Wall of words is much, much so.
Devils playground indeed Price at Bitstamp 666$ as other users reported
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ShroomsKit
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March 05, 2014, 02:21:38 PM Last edit: March 05, 2014, 02:50:04 PM by ShroomsKit |
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Ok so the last hour i did some reading on random news sites and forums etc. I've seen some hate against Bitcoin in the past but the stuff i read today! It looks like everybody who doesn't actually own any coins hates it! And not just hates it but is absolutely totally digusted by it! Like Bitcoin just killed their dog or something. I don't think i've seen such almost global hate and disgust towards something on the internet ever before. People want to see it burn! They want to see Bitcoin and Bitcoin users burn in hell! Oh and like most here already realized, many of those people think Gox = Bitcoin and Bitcoin just broke down. Bitcoin is bankrupt. And they LOVE it! They act like it's the best thing that ever happened on the internet. The fact that 1 coin is worth 660 dollars doesn't mean anything it seems. Bitcoin is dead and WE ALL lost our money and totally deserved it.
I'm actually a bit shocked. I knew it was bad but this bad?
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JorgeStolfi
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March 05, 2014, 02:22:49 PM |
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Bringing LTC into BTCChina showed perfectly how dead the Chinese market really is. If the same thing would of happened in December, then LTC would have probably had risen to 100$. Now it got one foolish spike up and after that it's pretty dead with showing low demand and weak attempts to rise.
BTC-China is a very strange marketplace, I cannot tell wether they have real trade or just arbitrage. Anyway they have a lot less volume than Bitstamp. Let's see what happens when Huobi starts LTC trading, as its CEO promised.
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thezerg
Legendary
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Activity: 1246
Merit: 1010
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March 05, 2014, 02:42:19 PM |
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Bitcoin does NOT need to win the lottery or have some exorbitant pay off in order for it to be of considerable value. Actually, even if bitcoin maintains its value flat, it is doing a heck of a lot better than the dollar b/c the dollar is inevitably programmed to shrink in value due to dilution (too much expansion of the supply).
Sure, cash under the mattress is definitely a bad investment. On the other hand, the stock of a good company usually has a positive net expected value, typically around 5% of the price plus inflation. So, you go wrong in a couple of respects regarding your bitcoin/lottery discussion, the first, as referred to above, is the anticipation that some major payoff is needed in order for bitcoin to be successful.
When I started paying attention to bitcoin, a few months ago, one of the two main "selling" points used to convince people to invest in it was the demand/supply argment, ostensibly proving that its price would rise to six figures or more when, at some not too distant future, everybody starte using bitcoins. (A few days ago someone posted a photo of a projected slide showing such numbers for various scenarios, ending with "investment/pension funds keep their capital as bitcoin" and some astronomical number beside that.) And in this thread, the "hodlers" apparently still believe in that math. There were (there are) several things wrong with that argument, the main one being the implicit assumption that cryptocoin = bitcoin. A year ago, the salesman could jump from "cryptocoins are so nice that everybody will want to use them" to "bitcoins will be used in X% of all e-payments" without people noticing the gap. Back then, altcoins were only a theoretical possibility, which was dismissed by claims about the "Network Effect" and "First-Movers Advantage". Well, since then altcoins became a reality, did not fail as predicted, and some of them seem to be strong competitors to bitcoin. One thing that bitcoiners missed is that any "Satoshi" who creates an altcoin can make a lot of money by selling his pre-mined coins at the right moment, even if the coin flops later on. Clearly the Network Effect and First Mover Advantage weren't strong enough to counter that "Copycat Advantage". Moreover, some altcoins do have some advantages over bitcoin, such as faster processing, democratic distribution of pre-mined coins, or a lethally cute puppy face. Anyway, now bitcoin salesmen cannot do that jump any more. They must keep saying "cryptocoin" instead of "bitcoin" all the way to the final demand/supply formula. But since the supply of cryptocoins is infinite, not 21 million, the conclusion will be that "when cryptocoins are used to their full potential, the price of a cryptocoin will be at least zero." In other words, that demand/supply argument just went poof. The sad fact is that now there is no argument or statistical analysis that will justify any claim about the value of a bitcoin in that ultimate future. It definitely may be zero, even if cryptocoins succeed beyond all dreams. WRT the copycoin issue, I would think this as well if this was all theoretical. But there are other real-life examples. For some reason gold is more monetized than silver, platinum, indium, etc even though these other elements (generally) have more utility so give more protection against a demonetization event. And don't say the reason is because gold is more scarce -- because so it bitcoin. The same it true with fiat currencies. They all provide essentially the same functional properties but for some reason the USD is more valued than Zimbabwe whatevers. Again, you can't use "scarcity" because bitcoin has that. You can't use that the USD is more trusted than Zimbabwe because why is that trust important? The USG is trusted not to cause hyper-inflation of the USD so this trust issue is a proxy for scarcity. But you say, the USD is accepted by everyone in the US and in many places worldwide. EXACTLY. The "first mover's advantage" is really another way of saying Bitcoin will be accepted in more places than any alts. Think about it... if you are going to go thru all the trouble to accept an alt you'll certainly also accept bitcoin. But the reverse is not true. Almost nobody accepts alts right now...
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joburgtaxi
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March 05, 2014, 02:49:56 PM |
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Ok so the last hour i did some reading on random news sites and forums etc. I've seen some hate against Bitcoin in the past but the stuff i read today! It looks like everybody who doesn't actually own any coins hates it! And not just hate it but is absolutely totally digusted by it! Like Bitcoin just killed their dog or something. I don't think i've seen such almost global hate and disgust towards something on the internet ever before. People want to see it burn! They want to see Bitcoin and Bitcoin users burn in hell! Oh and like most here already realized, many of those people think Gox = Bitcoin and Bitcoin just broke down. Bitcoin is bankrupt. And they LOVE it! They act like it's the best thing that ever happened on the internet. The fact that 1 coin is worth 660 dollars doesn't mean anything it seems. Bitcoin is dead and WE ALL lost our money and totally deserved it.
I'm actually a bit shocked. I knew it was bad but this bad?
It is human nature, they hate it because they are not part of it and when it went to $1200 they all were wishing that they were part of it. Now that the media has portraid BTC as crashing and burning all of those that were envious now think they have reason to give themselves a pat on the back in the false knowledge that they did not miss out on anything and that no one is now better off than them. edit---- They are going to hate even more when it goes up again !!!
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Nemo1024
Legendary
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Activity: 1680
Merit: 1014
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March 05, 2014, 02:50:09 PM |
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It's like the Devils playground at the moment.
EDIT.
Thanks Jorgi. I've only read the first 2 lines. Wall of words is much, much so.
Devils playground indeed Price at Bitstamp 666$ as other users reported Hmm... At least buy at 666 if you missed out on 13. Next stop is 1337
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San1ty
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March 05, 2014, 02:53:23 PM |
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Ok so the last hour i did some reading on random news sites and forums etc. I've seen some hate against Bitcoin in the past but the stuff i read today! It looks like everybody who doesn't actually own any coins hates it! And not just hates it but is absolutely totally digusted by it! Like Bitcoin just killed their dog or something. I don't think i've seen such almost global hate and disgust towards something on the internet ever before. People want to see it burn! They want to see Bitcoin and Bitcoin users burn in hell! Oh and like most here already realized, many of those people think Gox = Bitcoin and Bitcoin just broke down. Bitcoin is bankrupt. And they LOVE it! They act like it's the best thing that ever happened on the internet. The fact that 1 coin is worth 660 dollars doesn't mean anything it seems. Bitcoin is dead and WE ALL lost our money and totally deserved it.
I'm actually a bit shocked. I knew it was bad but this bad?
What do you expect honestly? Of course a big part of the population is jelly because hey didn't get in and they'll keep on trolling till they get cheap coins or till most of us lost everything we have earned. It's basic herd psychology man! Edit: Wonder if you are going to read this or if you still have me on ignore because I told you how useless your "source?" posts were.
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ShroomsKit_Disgrace
Legendary
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Activity: 952
Merit: 1000
Yeah! I hate ShroomsKit!
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March 05, 2014, 02:56:11 PM |
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Ok so the last hour i did some reading on random news sites and forums etc. I've seen some hate against Bitcoin in the past but the stuff i read today! It looks like everybody who doesn't actually own any coins hates it! And not just hates it but is absolutely totally digusted by it! Like Bitcoin just killed their dog or something. I don't think i've seen such almost global hate and disgust towards something on the internet ever before. People want to see it burn! They want to see Bitcoin and Bitcoin users burn in hell! Oh and like most here already realized, many of those people think Gox = Bitcoin and Bitcoin just broke down. Bitcoin is bankrupt. And they LOVE it! They act like it's the best thing that ever happened on the internet. The fact that 1 coin is worth 660 dollars doesn't mean anything it seems. Bitcoin is dead and WE ALL lost our money and totally deserved it.
I'm actually a bit shocked. I knew it was bad but this bad?
What do you expect honestly? Of course a big part of the population is jelly because hey didn't get in and they'll keep on trolling till they get cheap coins or till most of us lost everything we have earned. It's basic herd psychology man! Edit: Wonder if you are going to read this or if you still have me on ignore because I told you how useless your "source?" posts were. Actually, ShroomsKit's thread is a continuous post "The user is currently ignored" together with his "panic" posts, nothing more. It is the way that he likes it.
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tailor
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Activity: 66
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March 05, 2014, 02:59:55 PM |
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It's basic herd psychology man!
Are you referring the herd inside the BTC community?
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N12
Donator
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Activity: 1610
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March 05, 2014, 03:01:53 PM |
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Bitstamp leaked their customer email addresses by the way, that's why all the new phishing attempts. Reminiscent of Emptygox 2011. Fuck all the operating major Bitcoin exchanges.
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spooderman
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Activity: 1638
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March 05, 2014, 03:05:49 PM |
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Bitstamp leaked their customer email addresses by the way, that's why all the new phishing attempts. Reminiscent of Emptygox 2011. Fuck all the operating major Bitcoin exchanges.
source?
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jl2012
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Activity: 1792
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March 05, 2014, 03:09:00 PM |
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Ok so the last hour i did some reading on random news sites and forums etc. I've seen some hate against Bitcoin in the past but the stuff i read today! It looks like everybody who doesn't actually own any coins hates it! And not just hate it but is absolutely totally digusted by it! Like Bitcoin just killed their dog or something. I don't think i've seen such almost global hate and disgust towards something on the internet ever before. People want to see it burn! They want to see Bitcoin and Bitcoin users burn in hell! Oh and like most here already realized, many of those people think Gox = Bitcoin and Bitcoin just broke down. Bitcoin is bankrupt. And they LOVE it! They act like it's the best thing that ever happened on the internet. The fact that 1 coin is worth 660 dollars doesn't mean anything it seems. Bitcoin is dead and WE ALL lost our money and totally deserved it.
I'm actually a bit shocked. I knew it was bad but this bad?
They hate it because because they have missed have biggest opportunity in their life. They learnt it for months or years. They ignored it, laughed at it, but at the saw time they witnessed the 100x or 1000x appreciation. They were lazy and didn't want to learn about it. They called it a scam/ponzi/tulip bubble at the first day they learnt it, but they have never seen a scam/ponzi/tulip bubble that could grow in such magnitude and time scale (There might have been a few 1000x scam/ponzi/tulip bubble in human history but they could never sustain for years). Mentally they couldn't join the party now because they could have bought at $0.5. If bitcoin really succeed, they will feel like an idiot for the rest of their life. Their only hope is bitcoin getting burnt in hell. But all these are irrelevant to the future of bitcoin. If there is really some indications with this, it means we still have a huge room for growth. These people are just like mentally shorting bitcoin. They spend time on internet to talk about it because they are paying attention to it. If the growth is astonishing enough, their "mental short" will get squeezed.
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N12
Donator
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Activity: 1610
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March 05, 2014, 03:09:08 PM |
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Bitstamp leaked their customer email addresses by the way, that's why all the new phishing attempts. Reminiscent of Emptygox 2011. Fuck all the operating major Bitcoin exchanges.
source? Eleuthria, admin of the BTCGuild mining pool, did the research on it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zaqvy/bitstamp_email_list_used_to_spread_mtgox_malware/cfs21qrBitstamp's email list was confirmed stolen ~2 weeks ago, when a boatload of emails claiming to be from support@btcguild.com (but not sent from any of the BTC Guild mail servers) went out talking about a 3.201 bitcoin transfer. After replying to the people shouting at me for being a scammer, I was eventually able to narrow the source of the leak to Bitstamp at the very least, and likely a few other sources on top of it. I informed Bitstamp that they had at least a breach on their email list, if not the rest of their system. At first they denied it, but in a follow up they eventually admitted to it. They then sent out a little security update email mentioning 2FA/password security. TL;DR: FUCK EMPTYGOX FUCK BITCRAMP AND FUCK BTC-PEE TOO
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spooderman
Legendary
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Activity: 1638
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March 05, 2014, 03:14:00 PM |
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argh ok ty blitz. we only have ourselves to blame for keeping our shit in these exchanges.
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JorgeStolfi
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March 05, 2014, 03:14:11 PM |
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Ok so the last hour i did some reading on random news sites and forums etc. I've seen some hate against Bitcoin in the past but the stuff i read today! It looks like everybody who doesn't actually own any coins hates it! [ ... ] I'm actually a bit shocked. I knew it was bad but this bad?
Is that hate directed at bitcoin itself? I believe it is directed at the bitcoin pushers and hypers. The message they get across is "if you don't invest in bitcoin, you must be very stupid indeed". Well, guess what, people don't have much love for those who call them idiots...
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dreamspark
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March 05, 2014, 03:14:56 PM |
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Bitstamp leaked their customer email addresses by the way, that's why all the new phishing attempts. Reminiscent of Emptygox 2011. Fuck all the operating major Bitcoin exchanges.
This is just getting stupid. After Im confident of the reversal and fairly sure its choo choo time Im getting all of my funds off exchanges and not trading until im confident in a competent exchange.
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