"Man buys $27 of bitcoin, forgets about them, finds they're now worth $886k"

[SheHadMANHands]

Well his last name was Hollywoodmoviesque for sure.

But I still don't think bitcoin is comparable to poker.  And, personally, I dont think we want it to be. If Bitcoin is just a place where people come to gamble and speculate it will never get to "the moon."

Bitcoin needs two major things to grow. Real innovation with bitcoin related business eco-system and asset investment. **

Poker didn't need anything but a coin and a chair and some exposure.

Agreed.  I just wanted to point out the comparison in psychology, and what sparks people's interest and gets them involved.

** Agreed.  Increased market cap, though, does create more incentive for start ups to enter the space and businesses to start accepting Bitcoin.  If it unfolds from a bubble created by "the Moneymaker effect", so be it.  I would just hope the eventual crash wouldn't be too sharp.

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[600watt]

I used to play a lot of poker.  Even semi-professionally for a while.  I'll never forget the "boom switch" that was flipped on when an "average Joe" named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003, for $2.5 million, on a $40 initial investment...

People eat that shit up.  Everyone wanted to get involved all of a sudden.

We could be priming for a huge bubble, which hopefully doesn't undermine Bitcoin's real value and innovation - not as a "get rich quick" scheme.  I suppose only time will tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_Main_Event_champions (notice entrants after 2003)

i find your reasoning convincing. this will get a lot of people curious. more stories like this will pop up, the media will love it. much faster than the bitcoin protocol will be used mainstream, bitcoin as a speculative asset will hit the streets and become popular. that´s how new people get involved. love it or hate it, it is this crazyness about bitcoin gaining such incredible value in less than 5 years that will cause a boom, not its technological elegance. people may think that it can´t rise at the same rate, but even a slower rate would still dwarf what they get from classical investments in less than 5 years.

Except that poker is fun. Buying Bitcoin is some complicated and boring shit.

Moneymaker was just a small part. The World Poker Tour was on air at the time and that took off like wildfire, as did online poker rooms. It was  perfect storm for the competitive U.S. egos. I was in the middle of it - actually opened a poker room in CR, which I later sold.

I would not call this comparable to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin could become as popular as poker on day, but it will be a much slower grind.

lol, we have things in common about poker  
your description about the perfect storm is correct
but it only attracted poker players
bitcoin attracts gamblers and many more. if it starts getting crazy like the poker wave, what do you think the price will be ? several k ? what signal would that send to the worlds 12 mio millionaires, to all institutional investors, to all deep pockets, to all those people that always resisted buying bitcoins ? let´s just hope the exchange infrastructure can cope with it. a larger chunk of the world economy will sooner or later migrate online via bitcoin price expansion.

[klovishey]

I dont think it will gets much attention, but it shows how bitcoin grew in last 3 years. Much more than Apple, Microsoft and so on in its first 4 years

[windjc]

I used to play a lot of poker.  Even semi-professionally for a while.  I'll never forget the "boom switch" that was flipped on when an "average Joe" named Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003, for $2.5 million, on a $40 initial investment...

People eat that shit up.  Everyone wanted to get involved all of a sudden.

We could be priming for a huge bubble, which hopefully doesn't undermine Bitcoin's real value and innovation - not as a "get rich quick" scheme.  I suppose only time will tell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_Main_Event_champions (notice entrants after 2003)

i find your reasoning convincing. this will get a lot of people curious. more stories like this will pop up, the media will love it. much faster than the bitcoin protocol will be used mainstream, bitcoin as a speculative asset will hit the streets and become popular. that´s how new people get involved. love it or hate it, it is this crazyness about bitcoin gaining such incredible value in less than 5 years that will cause a boom, not its technological elegance. people may think that it can´t rise at the same rate, but even a slower rate would still dwarf what they get from classical investments in less than 5 years.

Except that poker is fun. Buying Bitcoin is some complicated and boring shit.

Moneymaker was just a small part. The World Poker Tour was on air at the time and that took off like wildfire, as did online poker rooms. It was  perfect storm for the competitive U.S. egos. I was in the middle of it - actually opened a poker room in CR, which I later sold.

I would not call this comparable to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin could become as popular as poker on day, but it will be a much slower grind.

lol, we have things in common about poker  
your description about the perfect storm is correct
but it only attracted poker players
bitcoin attracts gamblers and many more. if it starts getting crazy like the poker wave, what do you think the price will be ? several k ? what signal would that send to the worlds 12 mio millionaires, to all institutional investors, to all deep pockets, to all those people that always resisted buying bitcoins ? let´s just hope the exchange infrastructure can cope with it. a larger chunk of the world economy will sooner or later migrate online via bitcoin price expansion.

Well Bitcoin is evolving and if it continues to do so and doesn't have some massive technical or legislative setback, it will eventually reach a tipping point. I mean we only need Bitcoin to be appealing as a 1% of your investment type of portfolio addition. That alone would take it to the realm of $10k per BTC.

However, that tipping point is still quite a ways down the road in my opinion. But if we can have 2-3 more years of positive feedback and development loop, who knows.

[notme]

Don't forget that without a hard fork, we are capped at about 7 transactions per second.  That will put a damper on things if we grow too much before it is resolved.

[notme]

Don't forget that without a hard fork, we are capped at about 7 transactions per second.  That will put a damper on things if we grow too much before it is resolved.

We will just have to use the faster litecoin.

Crypto is crypto.

Okay, 28 tps, 35 if we count both chains.  Still nowhere near enough for PayPal level volume, and PayPal doesn't service much of the world.  Forget about Visa or MasterCard.

[windjc]

Don't forget that without a hard fork, we are capped at about 7 transactions per second.  That will put a damper on things if we grow too much before it is resolved.

I did not know this. What is being done to fix this issue?

Nevermind - just read up about it.

[notme]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

[Lohoris]

House in Norway is that cheap? Only $180k for 3-bedroom apt?

It's cold.
Plus, terrible food.

[SheHadMANHands]

Don't forget that without a hard fork, we are capped at about 7 transactions per second.  That will put a damper on things if we grow too much before it is resolved.

I did not know this. What is being done to fix this issue. That is a major one.

First, transactions are expected to go "off the chain" (like Coinbase does).  It doesn't make sense to flood the block chain with every transaction if many can be done by companies of the chain.  It's also cheaper to keep it off the chain.

[wunkbone]

When is that going to happen to me ..... buying some lotto now ... heh

[viboracecata]

This news may have more people to hold their bitcoins instead of spending.