The human brain is not ready to deal with exponential growth

[cellard]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

[1714940860]

1714940860

[1714940860]

1714940860

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Yes, bumping old threads is against unofficial rules. I learned that recently.

Our brain indeed is not prepared to deal with exponential growth. Many people have problems understanding exponential behavior in different aspects of the world.

But I don’t think many of them are depressed because those who sold at $100 made a good profit if they bought lower than that. This issue has been debated in the forum many times and I don’t find many people believing that there are still early adopters holding significant amounts of btc.

[solarion]

Yes, bumping old threads is against unofficial rules. I learned that recently.

Our brain indeed is not prepared to deal with exponential growth. Many people have problems understanding exponential behavior in different aspects of the world.

But I don’t think many of them are depressed because those who sold at $100 made a good profit if they bought lower than that. This issue has been debated in the forum many times and I don’t find many people believing that there are still early adopters holding significant amounts of btc.

It is not digging the old thread dude. He just compare the information with the old to current scenario. Since he is a legendary member he may much aware of unwanted digging the old thread is not good and recommendable.
Sell and buying bitcoin does not matter but you have to be involved in the bitcoin transaction and btc related projects all the time.
Not a early adopters only do all the things in the forum and outside. Recent adopters also bitcoin to grow higher in the cost.

[Yakamoto]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

I don't think it's something to do with exponential growth that is detrimental, it's more the unbelief that such a (previously) niche item and community could blow up in the way it has. And having Bitcoin hitting new highs almost weekly definitely has some people depressed, but keeping how it looked in their position is also something most of them remember. Sure, I'd be pissed with myself if I sold early and never got back in, but I wouldn't be feeling down with myself constantly. I've already had similar experiences over the past few years and I still keep trucking along.

[Hell-raiser]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

This is the strange thing with human psychology. We are being constantly deceived into thinking that something cannot happen or, on the contrary, that something else is definitely set to happen, while in fact we are just being fooled by our misconceptions, delusions, and what is called "gut feeling". We are wrong most of the time, and accepting this fact is likely the only way to live with Bitcoin if you want to tame it. It is now sitting at 6000$, but tomorrow it may kiss good-bye or hit 60000$.

[dothebeats]

Yes, bumping old threads is against unofficial rules. I learned that recently.

No necroposts were made so it's all good.


I was also a non-believer of exponential growths in bitcoin 2 years back. A coin that is intended to oppose the world's banks and currencies would never be valued over a thousand dollars since governments would be trying so hard to take it down before it makes any significant effect to the global economy. Fast forward here I am, never been so wrong in my life and benefiting with the exponential growth that I deemed impossible two years ago.

It is embedded within a human's psyche that something would be impossible unless there would be evidences to back it up and they witnessed it first hand. Up to now, I still can't believe that $6000 is possible on a purely speculative asset, and I started buying @ $200 3 years ago. Back then, everyone is happy with a $20 gain within a week, but now everyone is aiming higher since we all know that it is possible since we witnessed it already.

[cellard]

Yes, bumping old threads is against unofficial rules. I learned that recently.

No necroposts were made so it's all good.


I was also a non-believer of exponential growths in bitcoin 2 years back. A coin that is intended to oppose the world's banks and currencies would never be valued over a thousand dollars since governments would be trying so hard to take it down before it makes any significant effect to the global economy. Fast forward here I am, never been so wrong in my life and benefiting with the exponential growth that I deemed impossible two years ago.

It is embedded within a human's psyche that something would be impossible unless there would be evidences to back it up and they witnessed it first hand. Up to now, I still can't believe that $6000 is possible on a purely speculative asset, and I started buying @ $200 3 years ago. Back then, everyone is happy with a $20 gain within a week, but now everyone is aiming higher since we all know that it is possible since we witnessed it already.

I talked to Trace Mayer last year and when he was defending his $3000 prediction he was getting a lot of hate, thinking he was a mindless pumper. We did hit $3000 and broke if after the halving and after defeating the Bitcoin Unlimited nonsense.

We are now on a similar situation where the only thing we need to do is to beat the Segwit2x hardfork nonsense. If we get past this, $10000 is pretty possible as early as 2018 Q1, some people even call it before.

Remember that everyone that didn't buy bitcoin back then was because they were thinking linearly, not exponentially, so don't make the same mistake. Keep writing to everyone supporting segwit2x to stop supporting it, dump B2X come November and we will reach ATH soon,

[player514]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

This is the strange thing with human psychology. We are being constantly deceived into thinking that something cannot happen or, on the contrary, that something else is definitely set to happen, while in fact we are just being fooled by our misconceptions, delusions, and what is called "gut feeling". We are wrong most of the time, and accepting this fact is likely the only way to live with Bitcoin if you want to tame it. It is now sitting at 6000$, but tomorrow it may kiss good-bye or hit 60000$.

There's a common misconsepction that happens. It's like when watching baseball, people say that a batter is "due to hit" if he hasn't hit his past few pitches. Similarly, people have this odd sense of extrapolation, saying that bitcoin will not be able to go through another burst because it's not "due" and because it has already been through one. This is pretty fallacious, but there definitely is some kind of limit to how much bitcoin can grow, we're just not close to that point yet.

[usorin]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

Those were the days, and they have changed. If i were in their place probably i would have a discomfort feeling regarding the selling of bitcoins. Sometime people don't believe enuf that is possible. If we don have an example in the background then it is much harder to believe. There was a movie related to Jesus and one person has seen the miracles and told him that even than i see with my own eyes i can't believe it, and then He said> then how can believe those who have not see what you have see. It is hard to trust that something almost impossible will happen, and as we see, it happen, the miracle of cryptocurrency. Sorry for the religious part, for those who are not. 10x for understanding.

[FrueGreads]

That opinion doesn't surprise me at all, and I'm not sure it's related to difficulties in dealing with exponential growth. I think it's related with having difficulties in understanding the true concept of bitcoin and it's value. We normally are afraid of what we don't know, and we don't really deal well with uncertainty. Even though bitcoin is close to $6000 now, we keep hearing similar opinions. People call it a bubble, they say governments will ban them, they say it's used to criminal activities, they say banks wont allow them and will kill it eventually.

The thing is that no one knew what was going to happen back then, so they prefered saying that it wouldn't work out, because that's the safest approach to deal with what you don't understand. If you take a safe approach, you think you are decreasing your chances of being hurt by it. The same is still happening now, all over the world.

[Gozie51]

The thing is that, the future is always not certain for humans and so, there might not be anyway to know that bitcoin price will be this high.

Moreover, like a user said, early adopters would have also sold with profit. In fact, with huge profit.

Also, the value of it (bitcoin) to fiat at the time would also be like what we are witnessing today or even better giving the standard of living that has deteriorated speedily.

[Iranus]

The funniest post of all on that thread was posted about 5 years and 2 months ago:

5 years  

To be fair though, it's pretty hard to justify a price like this with anything other than speculation.

That's not entirely a bad thing, but it does mean that BTC is turning out to be something different to what they expected it to be.  They expected price to be tied pretty closely with the number of merchants that accept it, but now it's become more of a speculative asset and "digital gold" of sorts.

If you were treating BTC as primarily just a currency like they were, you could understand their skepticism.

[Beicin]

Its funny reading these old threads, so many extreme oppinions being proven wrong. Only time can tell around how much Bitcoin is gonna peak (maybe in 2~3 halvenings from now?), but as of now we can still expect it to see a lot of growth.

[mrcash02]

This guy just got the wrong prediction... It's easy to say now how dumb were those people who didn't believe Bitcoin as we have the past and the present to compare the situations, but on that time how could the guy have sure about something improbable that couldn't happen? That was the reality on that time.

It's like to speculate now about the price in 5 years. Some people will be right and others will be wrong or maybe no one will be right... 

[phr0stbyt3]

This isn't the only post if you dig the forum you will find many more replies similar replies claiming bitcoin is shit and it won't reach high but again it's totally fine no one can force you to invest anywhere if you have some extra funds now (not savings ) don't simply just keep it around invest it somewhere there are many opportunities and you never know which one might work for you

[Hell-raiser]

This isn't the only post if you dig the forum you will find many more replies similar replies claiming bitcoin is shit and it won't reach high but again it's totally fine no one can force you to invest anywhere if you have some extra funds now (not savings ) don't simply just keep it around invest it somewhere there are many opportunities and you never know which one might work for you

I think everyone from the group of early adopters and simple long term Bitcoin holders had been thinking along these lines at some time of their Bitcoin journey, and probably not just once. Some of them have certainly already sold all of their coins having come to a conclusion that Bitcoin reached its lifetime maximum. Now they may indeed regret their decision but it is easy to be wise after the event and in hindsight. Regardless, it looks like we will always have to face these dilemmas and such choices.

Unless Bitcoin indisputably conquers the world.

[Kemarit]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

I have been digging a lot of old threads and I find it very funny because they always think that bitcoin will not go any further. LOL. But I don't want to bump it. I think its the fear of the unknown for some of them back in the days. Too many arguments that bitcoin can only do this and that, they have put the limitation on bitcoin back then without really understanding its true potential, specially as form of investments or store of value. You will really find some of them very hilarous, but moving forward, they have been proven wrong by bitcoin, by how the price goes up in a very short amount of time. Bitcoin has defeated a lot of issues and will continue to do in the future. No need to doubt it, not even once.

[kingvirtus09]

That's just an opinion i think because he/she scares about the potential of bitcoin way back, hope this is guy is supporting bitcoin price. but basically on my point view he/she rather rejected bitcoin. i hope he/she ok now. by the time it reach $10,000 i would love to buy bitcoin it dip.

[amaral1977]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

I like to revisit this kind of threads, and will love to see my own writings in a few years. I went back to the thread and user Kupsi replied 5 years.i clicked on him and saw he was active on Oct 11th. So maybe he reads this thread and comments on his own prediction of five years that only failed for a coupled of months:) And if he still has the same crystal ball maybe he can make us some new predictions as well:)

[amaral1977]

I was reading old posts to try to find what people were saying back in the day about BTC reaching $5000 and found interesting post such as this:

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100487.0 (not necessarily post here, admins dont seem to like old threads being brought up again for some reason, but it's good to read this for historical reasons)

Also a lot of people were talking about the scaling drama already back then.

It's funny here we are hitting $6000 now. A lot of people posting there sold and are now depressed for life.

I don't think it's something to do with exponential growth that is detrimental, it's more the unbelief that such a (previously) niche item and community could blow up in the way it has. And having Bitcoin hitting new highs almost weekly definitely has some people depressed, but keeping how it looked in their position is also something most of them remember. Sure, I'd be pissed with myself if I sold early and never got back in, but I wouldn't be feeling down with myself constantly. I've already had similar experiences over the past few years and I still keep trucking along.

I think we must learn and adapt to the fact that any nich in the global internet era can blow and be HUGE! And now bTC and blockchain could make this fenomenon even bigger because along with the global fenomenon of internet its adding decentralization and a payment means that its truly global. So i think this is the grounds to see nich projects to become huge at a faster pace and rate than before!