Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen said this is a bubble

[QuestionAuthority]

a bubble popping does NOT mean death/ non existence
it means losing the vapour/air of empty space speculation where by a much lower level of underlying value becomes visible


tulips still exist and grow.. literally
houses still exist and grow

whenever i see a crash i see it as discount day, not run away penny-less Armageddon day.

general tips:
1. dont throw your whole life savings into one order/one investment.
2. its better to use funds that would have gone to waste anyway. EG if you waste $80 on fast food each week, which just ends in the toilet 6 hours after digesting. use that to invest in bitcoin
3. if your disposable income(explained in 2) is low whereby a bitcoin tx fee is a noticeable % of that income. keep it as fiat until you see a good discount day where the drop offsets any costs to ensure you dont lose out before you have even started
4. dont hold bitcoin waiting for 10,000% returns. its better to wait until you make just some profit. cash out. and then buy back in at the next discount day.
5. you dont have to cash out all of it when you make profit. but leaving it all in as a hold, means you lose out on opportunities to gain more on those discount days
6. never hold(medium/longterm) funds in an exchange. only hold the funds you want to trade in an exchange for the time period you want to trade it. keep the majority of funds that are not ready to be traded off of exchanges and instead keep them in your own private keys

P.S i fully agree with all of 'question authorities' posts in this topic.

Thanks for the support. It shocks and amazes me that no one is bright enough to see this rise in price as unnatural. Can anyone name any other commodity or currency that has increased 1,900% in less than a year? If gold went up 1,900% from its current price that would mean an ounce of gold would be worth about $25,000. Does anyone ever see that happening in less than a year?

High interest rates and high bitcoin volatility are associated with the high speed of cryptology, information spreading through the networks at the speed of light. It is not possible to move gold with such speeds.

Really? I’ve had a transaction stuck for 4 days on your light speed network. LOL
I’ve had exchanges take routinely over two weeks to get me my cash from a small coin sale. Your information superhighway has some very large Los Angeles style traffic jams going on every day.

India buys an average of 800 tonnes of gold every year and its total jewelry market is worth more than $20 billion. The United States of America is the world’s third highest buyer of gold. In 2007, it purchased 275 tons.

There’s a gold buyer at a store not 2 miles from my house that will give you spot minus 1.25 for anything up to 500 ounces a day and he’s open 7 days a week.

[2fresh]

It might be, but I've been reading since btc was 100 that it would be a bubble.

[BTCforJoe]

I'm hoping that this bubble does burst so that we can shakeout the greedy investors that Bitcoin has currently groomed. I'm not a super early adopter of Bitcoin, but I did start gaining interest around the $100 price point. I bought my first Bitcoin at $230. And boy, was I excited! Learning about the Blockchain and the technology was something I could get behind! Using Bitcoin to top up my prepaid phone, or to order ebooks online... Those were the glory days.

I took a little break from using BTC as a currency after the price hit $500, and took the opportunity to start hodling and introducing friends and family to BTC. I said the price was steadily increasing, and that Bitcoin was going to have amazing growth in the years to come.

Nowhere did I imagine that the price would hit $20,000 just a few short years later. Of course all my friends and family were/are excited. I was excited, but ultimately, this is now the moment that I'm becoming worried. I'm noticing the types of people that are now "experts" about cryptocurrency on my social media platforms, and I'm not liking what I'm seeing. I've been slowly exiting my initial investment into other alts, but for the most part, I'm a true hodler. I'm curious to see how Bitcoin fares through this bubble. I choose not to capitalize on this growth. I want to believe that Bitcoin is a great store of value, but I'm even beginning to question my own opinions on that.

With that said, not all bubbles are bad. I feel that this bitcoin bubble bursting would be enough to shakeout all the greed, but not be detrimental enough to kill off Bitcoin. I feel like it would be a huge reset button that will put us back on track to the slow and steady growth of value, rather than the huge hills and valleys we've been seeing. But maybe that's all a pipe dream.

Either way, thanks for all of the articles, @QuestionAuthority. I'm soaking up as much opinion as I can, and it's really (subjectively) opening up my eyes to what's really going on in the Bitcoin world.

[LoyceV]

I think what he means is Bitcoin is rising too much too fast. It would be better for people to buy and hold for a long time and let the price rise slowly. Instead people are buying and selling fast. That will cause a crash.

I prefer to look at BitcoinAverage in log-view:

This graph has been going up steeper than average lately, just like it did before the previous drops. If there is anything you can predict from this graph, I think it's that Bitcoin will go up long-term.

A month ago "everybody" was predicting Bitcoin to go up to $50k, $500k or $1M! Basically, when it goes up, all "predictions" are that it will go up more, and when it goes down a bit, "everybody" says it's a bubble that will crash. And the beauty of all this: they'll all be right at some point in the future! How easy is it to say: "I told you so" if everybody is right at some point? Mark my words, I'll tell you "I told you so" later
It's just in Bitcoin's nature to go up and down a lot, and the shitload of altcoins is accelerating this. High fees, miner's electricity bills, exchanges' commission and altcoins/ICOs are all draining money from the Bitcoin ecosystem, and yet, it's worth more than it ever was a month ago!

Of course Bitcoin has been rising too fast, and altcoins even faster. There's not much logic in going up 100x or more in a year.
Who here even knows most ICOs are actually ITOs? They don't even have Coins, they sell Tokens! Altcoins are created with only one goal: earn money for the creator, and Ethereum is the one that enables many other Tokens to be sold at high prices, meanwhile increasing it's own price.

I'm hoping that this bubble does burst so that we can shakeout the greedy investors that Bitcoin has currently groomed.

You'll never get rid of "greedy investors". I don't think many people joined Bitcoin (or this forum) for any other reason than trying to earn some money.

Using Bitcoin to top up my prepaid phone, or to order ebooks online... Those were the glory days.

It pains me to see this isn't possible anymore due to high fees, and I don't believe this can't damage Bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed to be electronic cash, but it's too expensive to use.

took the opportunity to start hodling and introducing friends and family to BTC

I know several people who are interested in Bitcoin, and would like to buy some, but I can't in good conscience recommend doing so at current fees.
Example: the most popular site to buy/sell Bitcoin in the Netherlands (Bitonic) sells a minimum of 0.01642589BTC for 200 euro. If you would want to sell it again (0.01562589BTC after fee), you get 170.58 euro back. That's an instant 30 euro loss (the site takes a few percent only, the rest is caused by fees). I hate it, but because of this I can't recommend buying small amounts of Bitcoin now.
I can imagine many people keep their coins on an exchange. This saves fees, but you risk everything to do so.

[HeroicZ1]

It might be, but I've been reading since btc was 100 that it would be a bubble.

Maybe it's because the bubble is yet to burst? I dunno, because I'm also not convinced by what I'm seeing with the slow transactions (taking weeks for some), and expensive fees just to send a few coins?!

[QuestionAuthority]

I think everyone here is basically seeing what I’m seeing. Bitcoin could have had a great future. It is an earth shattering new technology with the potential to usher in great changes in the world of finance. It could be used to help the disenfranchised, unbanked, and helpless people that are currently abused by wealthy power hungry monsters. It could be used to level the playing field of government spending allowing every citizen of the world to see and track where governments are wasting their money. It could be used to pull money away from the financial robber barons on Wall Street and return its control to the people. Bitcoin could eventually have a real economy surrounding it where people sell products for btc and live on their profit using only btc.

Unfortunately, all of the above is fantasy. Will the price keep climbing? Of course, because the main people benefitting from the unnatural manipulated rise in price are the robber barons. These charlatans are keeping bitcoin away from the people that need it the most. Bitcoin is used less and less each day to make purchases. You can’t make dust transactions at all, so micro transactions like tipping are out of the question. You can’t make a retail purchase like coffee, drinks at a bar, grocery shopping, or a hamburger because the fees are too high. Bitcoin is controlled completely by a handful of self important monsters and is further from decentralization at this point than even democratically controlled government fiat. Bitcoin has become yet another trick used by the wealthy to take money away from the poor and no one sees it. The easiest way to rob someone is to convince them they are going to be rich if they follow the path of the robber. Bitcoin could last a hundred years and it still will have died for me less than three years from its creation. It’s really very sad.

[joebrook]

”Bitcoin is heading towards a dot.com crash and is being driven by a “mania” and “market manipulation”, says Bitcoin Foundation executive director Llew Claasen.

“The fact that you have a 30% in value of Bitcoin in one day is dangerous,” said Claasen yesterday, commenting on the rise of the price in Bitcoin yesterday (7 December).

Speaking at Startup Grind event at Workshop 17 in Cape Town, he said there is strong evidence to suggest that some traders are using what he referred to as “tethers” — a digital representation of the US dollar — to push up the price of Bitcoin.

Tethers were created by a company affiliated with Bitfinex, to move into and out of market positions, he said.”

http://ventureburn.com/2017/12/bitcoin-market-manipulation/

If this is true, is it helping or hurting bitcoin?

Although I think there is a lot of bubble in the cryptocurrency market today, we can still make money from it, right?

That's what the investors care about, making money but it seems that this publication is very old and actually dated during the first week of December. In spite of what he is saying, i really still doubt that bitcoin is indeed a bubble. People always say that but without any proper explanation.

[BTCforJoe]

I think everyone here is basically seeing what I’m seeing. Bitcoin could have had a great future. It is an earth shattering new technology with the potential to usher in great changes in the world of finance. It could be used to help the disenfranchised, unbanked, and helpless people that are currently abused by wealthy power hungry monsters. It could be used to level the playing field of government spending allowing every citizen of the world to see and track where governments are wasting their money. It could be used to pull money away from the financial robber barons on Wall Street and return its control to the people. Bitcoin could eventually have a real economy surrounding it where people sell products for btc and live on their profit using only btc.

Unfortunately, all of the above is fantasy. Will the price keep climbing? Of course, because the main people benefitting from the unnatural manipulated rise in price are the robber barons. These charlatans are keeping bitcoin away from the people that need it the most. Bitcoin is used less and less each day to make purchases. You can’t make dust transactions at all, so micro transactions like tipping are out of the question. You can’t make a retail purchase like coffee, drinks at a bar, grocery shopping, or a hamburger because the fees are too high. Bitcoin is controlled completely by a handful of self important monsters and is further from decentralization at this point than even democratically controlled government fiat. Bitcoin has become yet another trick used by the wealthy to take money away from the poor and no one sees it. The easiest way to rob someone is to convince them they are going to be rich if they follow the path of the robber. Bitcoin could last a hundred years and it still will have died for me less than three years from its creation. It’s really very sad.

Call me naive or overly-optimistic, but I see Bitcoin now purely as a store of value. Micro transactions for every day purposes are out of the question, but I'm holding on to the hope that Bitcoin could fare through all the current bullshit to come to be known as the the value behind all cryptocurrency. In other words, the hodler's commodity. But for it to become this way, the value and volatility will be at risk.

I don't know, man. I'm starting to see why so many early adopters are so discouraged with how Bitcoin has become what it has, and I'm constantly jumping on and off the "Bitcoin is dead" bandwagon.

-snip-

I know several people who are interested in Bitcoin, and would like to buy some, but I can't in good conscience recommend doing so at current fees.

I always preface any Bitcoin conversation that I have with friends by saying that I am not a financial analyst. I am not directing or advising my friends what to do with their money, but I do tell them about my personal experiences with Bitcoin. I do tell them that there has been a time when it was great for day-to-day transactions, but that currently I view it as a store of value and that I'm hodling. I know that a lot of them are fueled by the grandeur of future profits on their investments, but I take the time to explain to them why Bitcoin is so important nowadays, and how the Blockchain technology is a huge advancement towards our future. I dunno, I guess I like to think that I'm a responsible advocate of Bitcoin, but I know that people like us are rare in this explosive market.

[QuestionAuthority]

There’s nothing wrong with being an optimist. I used to be like that. Six years of watching it get worse and further from the dream I thought it was has kind of warn me down. Next time you’re talking to someone about bitcoin, ask them if they knew bitcoin was supposed to be a system that allows people to send money to each other without the need for a trusted third-party. Then ask them if they know what that means.

[squatter]

Really? I’ve had a transaction stuck for 4 days on your light speed network. LOL
I’ve had exchanges take routinely over two weeks to get me my cash from a small coin sale. Your information superhighway has some very large Los Angeles style traffic jams going on every day.

No doubt about that. But I'm not too concerned. Anyone touting the Bitcoin protocol as some perfect, instant or cheap/free system is simply wrong. That's the cost of decentralization; it's a simple decentralized messaging protocol. Every message comes with storage, bandwidth and propagation costs.

Bitcoin is used less and less each day to make purchases. You can’t make dust transactions at all, so micro transactions like tipping are out of the question. You can’t make a retail purchase like coffee, drinks at a bar, grocery shopping, or a hamburger because the fees are too high. Bitcoin is controlled completely by a handful of self important monsters and is further from decentralization at this point than even democratically controlled government fiat. Bitcoin has become yet another trick used by the wealthy to take money away from the poor and no one sees it. The easiest way to rob someone is to convince them they are going to be rich if they follow the path of the robber. Bitcoin could last a hundred years and it still will have died for me less than three years from its creation. It’s really very sad.

I hear you. This was, however, a byproduct of the ecosystem that Satoshi foresaw as well. Mainstream adoption of a deflationary money necessarily means the cost to adopt it will increase, especially in the context of decentralization, where every transaction adds costs to the system.

There are systems that can interact with Bitcoin's protocol that can significantly lower the costs and delays associated with it -- with potential security and privacy trade-offs. Lightning and sidechains are both a reality now. It'll be interesting to see how their adoption affects on-chain traffic, especially since interacting with them requires on-chain transactions.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but I won't lie. I am genuinely disturbed by the greed and cult-like behavior we see in this "community." I think that we can build a better future with decentralized tools like cryptocurrency, but I'm almost looking forward to a bear market where the price doesn't dominate all discussions.