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April 23, 2013, 11:40:04 AM |
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Bubbly terminology.
It isnt really possible to define a bubble in terms of numbers. A price increase period, followed by a price reduction. Already with the trends here, you have to decide where in time you start. Oil is in a downward trend if you speak about the last year, but if you start with 1980, it is in an upward trend.
Then, in bubbly speak, you have to take the amplitude into account. A small rise is not a bubble, a big rise can be, but what is small and big?
To call a thing a bubble, you probably also have to have a stable price before the upward trend. What about after the bubble? Calling it a bubble, you implicate that the price after the bubble, or for some time in the future, if you speak about a current bubble, has to be stable and low. If it goes back up to the bubble top quickly after the crash, is it then a bubble?
It should be clear that just by looking at numbers, we can not call a bubble, we need presumptions about the timescale and the amplitude.
Then we have the speculative buying. People buy to profit on the rise and for no other reason, hoping to dollar-out before the crash. This could be a fine definition of a bubble for commodities with a use-value or service value, like oil coffe, tulips, houses and so on. The problem with this definition for bitcoin and for other modern money, is that these money types have only exchange value, no intrinsic value (direct use value). That means the only value it has, is that others value it. If it has value at all, it is in a bubble by this definition.
Conclusion - if the price rises because somebody thinks that it will rise in value - that is just the basic function of money. All money types without intrinsic value (bitcoin, fiat, bank deposits, bonds and bills) have value only because others value it. Therefore you can say that bitcoin is in a bubble that started with the genesis block, and ends sometime in the future, hopefully long after my time. All other ups and downs are just that, ups and downs.
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