If someone buys Bitcoin today, they'll be lucky to see a 300%+ ROI.

[sgbett]

itt caputalation. now *I'm* calling the bottom

So, I was wrong, but 2 months later and any purchase at $553 is no longer underwater.

Not a long time to wait really

Patience in BTC world is handsomely rewarded.

[DieJohnny]

I am actually feeling relief as I read your post as I believe that the newest owners of Bitcoin won't attain 10,000% gains until early holders sell their coins.

I personally have little doubt that you will regret liquidating. Bitcoin won't be going anywhere, and competition is really non-existent right now it will live on and be worth far more than what it is today.

[igorr]

If someone buys Bitcoin today, they'll be lucky to see a 300%+ ROI

It exclusively depends on the willy bot. 

[Raize]

It took $6.8 billion to get from $10 to $500.  It would take $63 billion to get to $5000/Bitcoin.  A lot of people are counting on Wall St. and institutional investors to make that happen, but $63 billion is A LOT of money, even for Wall St. How likely is it that investors will come up with $63 billion to put into a speculative currency?

Even though I haven't seen a response to my question yet, I did want to go back to your comment here and address this misconception.

A market cap of $63 billion != $63 billion in fiat purchases. In fact, it's likely that under $2 billion has ever been "spent" on Bitcoin.

The difference between market cap and cash flows is well-understood to most investors. Bitcoin's market cap right now is just over that of the company Energizer, the one that makes batteries. Which is more important, though? Energizer or Bitcoin? This should be an obvious answer since the market cap of Bitcoin basically encompasses every Bitcoin entity, including old miners, whales, investors, traders, merchants, processors, and etc. $63 billion dollars for a market cap is indeed high, but still only on a level of a Monsanto or Time Warner, which IMHO, Bitcoin definitely has the potential to be bigger than.

[gentlemand]

I recall reading somewhere that at current supply levels it would take $250 billion of direct expenditure to get BTC to around $80,000 per coin. Market cap don't mean very much at all.

[minorman]

Still think ripple is headed past bitcoin, gowest?

[IPCoinz]

I completely agree with you, also I will like to add, that is expensive to get into Bitcoin, to go out a purchase a single BTC is next to impossible.

And yes, Im aware of Coinbase, ect. But Lets I wanted to buy something in the next 20mins  or place a Bet on GoWest website, in the next 20mins, If im new, I wouldn't be able to do that.

You are correct, but this expense is mostly in know-how, and can be overcome with a little experience.

The BTC protocol makes sure that there is, and always will be, one and only one way to buy and take possession of BTC in <20 mins, and that is on the network by interacting directly with another bitcoin holder.  That is what BTC is all about.  You dont need banks.  You dont WANT an intermediary.  It wont work well through an intermediary.  To get BTC you get it directly from someone else on the network.

When I was a noob (ok I still am a "junior" member) I spent an entire weekend trying to buy my first BTC so I could plunk it immediately into BITTREX.  Coinbase would have made me wait a week.  Every other BTC/USD site wanted my ID, phone bill, and naked pictures of my girlfriend... no way Im sending out a photo of my passport (although my gf is happy to provide pics).  Finally I found localbitcoins, and I had my BTC on BITTREX less than 2 hours later.  Now I can repeat the same process in less than 20 mins through the trustworthy seller I found on the localbitcoins site.

So in the end, the BTC protocol enforces itself in real-world practice.  Not only does it circumvent banks.  It doesnt work when banks try to insert themselves into the transactions.  In terms of executing transactions P2P, its brilliant and foolproof (regardless of its vulnerabilities on the mining side of things).

I have been struggling to wrap my head around all of the "bitcoin 2.0" stuff and Im leaning more and more towards the position that it is merely the old money institutions trying to hamstring the transaction process all over again through mandatory nodes and pseudo-centralization.  Call it, "re-centralization."

Some one tell me why I need XRP instead of bitcoin WITHOUT mentioning the benefits of the "trusted" third party that all of these re-centralizing 2.0 platforms introduce, and maybe Ill buy some 2.0 tokens from you.  But if I have to hop through unnecessary gateways just for the access to your 2.0 system, Ill stick with BTC, darkcoin, pinkcoin, or whatever other 1.0 network suits my purchasing need at that moment...

[IPCoinz]

However, if you're worried about bitcoin and would rather have something more historically stable, you can always buy gold instead. In the event of economic problems, bitcoin, gold and alt-coins will retain value together.

Gold is as almost as useless as FIAT against an antagonistic government.  They dont teach us this in high school history class, but FDR confiscated all privately owned gold in America before and during WWII.  He just passed an executive order (maybe it was a law, you can google it up) that said: IT IS HENCEFORTH ILLEGAL FOR ANY CITIZEN TO OWN GOLD, PLEASE GIVE ALL GOLD AND TITLES TO GOLD TO ME IMMEDIATELY, OR WE WILL COME AND TAKE IT BY FORCE.  Think that wont happen again?

Another benefit of bitcoin is that it has virtually zero mass, so you can move it, hide it, and prevent it from being confiscated.  That is the risk we are really hedging against with bitcoin, the risk that the government will modify the laws that regulate physical property and/or the redeemability of FIAT money.  

What we really need instead of a bitcoin 2.0 is an internet 2.0.  We need a wireless network that will allow us all to continue to exchange cryptocurrencies WHEN (not if) the world government slams the internet shut in our faces.  If you cant log into the web or the cloud, you cant use bitcoin.  Or, a few predator drones could take out the major mining pools and the network goes down.  Access to a network infrastructre (the hardware, not the code), is the only remaining weakness we the people have.  I wish more people were focused on that - because this whole decentralized crypto economy still has that one real-world achilles heel, which is its total dependence upon DARPANET - uh, I mean the internet.

[IPCoinz]

Since you're still reading this, I gotta ask...

Do you plan to get back in when you spot the next bottom? Also, I noticed your call of $2 was actually off by a month. You posted that in October 2011 but Bitcoin didn't hit $2 till mid-November.

Bitcoin seems, to me, to be traded like a commodity. We know exactly how many Bitcoin there are, so selling out of everything and trying to call the bottom with certainty is a fool's errand. Granted you've done it before, and I see you noticed this as well, but don't you potentially see that happening again? Someone with millions or perhaps billions wanting to stockpile such an easily-manipulated currency?

Theoretically, yes, we know how many bitcoin there are supposed to be.  But I challenge you to prove to me that there is not, or cannot be, a shadow blockchain where a hidden cahce of bitcoin exist that can be shuttled on and off the "real" blockchain.  Doesnt MT Gox expose the prevalence of bots manipulating BTC price and volume with shadow/imaginary USD already?  Just a thought. 

Satoshi Nakamoto was not a lone gunman, he is a front for the leading edge of cryptography, which is a science funded by government intelligence agencies.  If youre in crypto, your job is paid by government grants, thats a fact.  Whoever started this whole thing was not independent of the NSA and the other usual suspects. 

They tricked us with the internet (though we almost won it away from them - until the United States Agency of Google stole it back), and they are duping us with this ridiculous meme that some Japanese hermit spontaneously birthed the blockchain, and nobody knew about its significance until the early adopters magically got rich.  Since the genesis block, the network is being carefully nurtured (and diligently pruned) by hidden hands, and those hidden hands know that whoever controls hashing power controls bitcoin, and therefore it has to be under the purview of the NSA. 

Conspiracy theories aside, I am highly skeptical that fake BTC do not exist somewhere in an underground shadow network with 100x the processing power of the rest of the world combined, processing power paid for by USD being printed faster now than even scamcoins are proliferating.

[birr]

Well, I be dog.

[Wexlike]

Since you're still reading this, I gotta ask...

Do you plan to get back in when you spot the next bottom? Also, I noticed your call of $2 was actually off by a month. You posted that in October 2011 but Bitcoin didn't hit $2 till mid-November.

Bitcoin seems, to me, to be traded like a commodity. We know exactly how many Bitcoin there are, so selling out of everything and trying to call the bottom with certainty is a fool's errand. Granted you've done it before, and I see you noticed this as well, but don't you potentially see that happening again? Someone with millions or perhaps billions wanting to stockpile such an easily-manipulated currency?

Theoretically, yes, we know how many bitcoin there are supposed to be.  But I challenge you to prove to me that there is not, or cannot be, a shadow blockchain where a hidden cahce of bitcoin exist that can be shuttled on and off the "real" blockchain.  Doesnt MT Gox expose the prevalence of bots manipulating BTC price and volume with shadow/imaginary USD already?  Just a thought. 

Satoshi Nakamoto was not a lone gunman, he is a front for the leading edge of cryptography, which is a science funded by government intelligence agencies.  If youre in crypto, your job is paid by government grants, thats a fact.  Whoever started this whole thing was not independent of the NSA and the other usual suspects. 

They tricked us with the internet (though we almost won it away from them - until the United States Agency of Google stole it back), and they are duping us with this ridiculous meme that some Japanese hermit spontaneously birthed the blockchain, and nobody knew about its significance until the early adopters magically got rich.  Since the genesis block, the network is being carefully nurtured (and diligently pruned) by hidden hands, and those hidden hands know that whoever controls hashing power controls bitcoin, and therefore it has to be under the purview of the NSA. 

Conspiracy theories aside, I am highly skeptical that fake BTC do not exist somewhere in an underground shadow network with 100x the processing power of the rest of the world combined, processing power paid for by USD being printed faster now than even scamcoins are proliferating.

what?..

[seljo]

Okay that's better.

This is even better...

[okthen]

Since you're still reading this, I gotta ask...

Do you plan to get back in when you spot the next bottom? Also, I noticed your call of $2 was actually off by a month. You posted that in October 2011 but Bitcoin didn't hit $2 till mid-November.

Bitcoin seems, to me, to be traded like a commodity. We know exactly how many Bitcoin there are, so selling out of everything and trying to call the bottom with certainty is a fool's errand. Granted you've done it before, and I see you noticed this as well, but don't you potentially see that happening again? Someone with millions or perhaps billions wanting to stockpile such an easily-manipulated currency?

Theoretically, yes, we know how many bitcoin there are supposed to be.  But I challenge you to prove to me that there is not, or cannot be, a shadow blockchain where a hidden cahce of bitcoin exist that can be shuttled on and off the "real" blockchain.  Doesnt MT Gox expose the prevalence of bots manipulating BTC price and volume with shadow/imaginary USD already?  Just a thought. 

Satoshi Nakamoto was not a lone gunman, he is a front for the leading edge of cryptography, which is a science funded by government intelligence agencies.  If youre in crypto, your job is paid by government grants, thats a fact.  Whoever started this whole thing was not independent of the NSA and the other usual suspects. 

They tricked us with the internet (though we almost won it away from them - until the United States Agency of Google stole it back), and they are duping us with this ridiculous meme that some Japanese hermit spontaneously birthed the blockchain, and nobody knew about its significance until the early adopters magically got rich.  Since the genesis block, the network is being carefully nurtured (and diligently pruned) by hidden hands, and those hidden hands know that whoever controls hashing power controls bitcoin, and therefore it has to be under the purview of the NSA. 

Conspiracy theories aside, I am highly skeptical that fake BTC do not exist somewhere in an underground shadow network with 100x the processing power of the rest of the world combined, processing power paid for by USD being printed faster now than even scamcoins are proliferating.

wow. Wasn't expecting to read this kind of stuff in 2014.
You have some reading to do mate.

[IPCoinz]

Since you're still reading this, I gotta ask...

Do you plan to get back in when you spot the next bottom? Also, I noticed your call of $2 was actually off by a month. You posted that in October 2011 but Bitcoin didn't hit $2 till mid-November.

Bitcoin seems, to me, to be traded like a commodity. We know exactly how many Bitcoin there are, so selling out of everything and trying to call the bottom with certainty is a fool's errand. Granted you've done it before, and I see you noticed this as well, but don't you potentially see that happening again? Someone with millions or perhaps billions wanting to stockpile such an easily-manipulated currency?

Theoretically, yes, we know how many bitcoin there are supposed to be.  But I challenge you to prove to me that there is not, or cannot be, a shadow blockchain where a hidden cahce of bitcoin exist that can be shuttled on and off the "real" blockchain.  Doesnt MT Gox expose the prevalence of bots manipulating BTC price and volume with shadow/imaginary USD already?  Just a thought. 

Satoshi Nakamoto was not a lone gunman, he is a front for the leading edge of cryptography, which is a science funded by government intelligence agencies.  If youre in crypto, your job is paid by government grants, thats a fact.  Whoever started this whole thing was not independent of the NSA and the other usual suspects. 

They tricked us with the internet (though we almost won it away from them - until the United States Agency of Google stole it back), and they are duping us with this ridiculous meme that some Japanese hermit spontaneously birthed the blockchain, and nobody knew about its significance until the early adopters magically got rich.  Since the genesis block, the network is being carefully nurtured (and diligently pruned) by hidden hands, and those hidden hands know that whoever controls hashing power controls bitcoin, and therefore it has to be under the purview of the NSA. 

Conspiracy theories aside, I am highly skeptical that fake BTC do not exist somewhere in an underground shadow network with 100x the processing power of the rest of the world combined, processing power paid for by USD being printed faster now than even scamcoins are proliferating.

wow. Wasn't expecting to read this kind of stuff in 2014.
You have some reading to do mate.

admittedly... point me to the right threads

[birr]

point me to the right threads

Take the U of Nicosia Bitcoin mooc:
http://mooc.universityofnicosia-online.com/pages/login.php

[IPCoinz]

thank you

[rebuilder]

IPCoinz: In brief, it's possible for a second, secret blockchain to exist. It would, however, be a separate chain, just another altcoin. There's no way afaik to create secret coins, sine the definition of a valid unit of Bitcoin is that it is acknowledged by the public blockchain, traceable to the first block the coins in question were created in. Creating an alternate chain won't help no matter how much processing power you throw at it, since coins originating from such a chain would be rejected by honest nodes who have a copy of the proper blockchain.

[kingscrown]

just read the article on your blog - you totally have valid points yet.. i personally keep alot of BTC, i wouldnt sell all at this point. it may go agai nto 1k$. 10k? nah i dont believe that.

[dan_and_shan]

Gday, you have some interesting points, but you timing to sell btc, is as bad as your choice in altcoins

[brg444]

Bitcoin only has 500K-2M users, has all this venture capitalist money, wink & nods from tech celebrities and a lot of newspaper coverage.   Why has the userbase expansion slowed down to nothing?  

Because the price is going down.

And by all measures it is indeed still too complex for mainstream adopters. But we are getting there and as you have mentioned this goes for any crypto.

It cannot grow the way of the Internet because joining the Internet did not necessitate consumers to divest their financial holdings from the system that has managed them their whole life.

Converting USD to BTC is not as simple as stopping writing letters and using email.

The challenges for a completely nascent money technology to be adopted are considerably more difficult than what any other technology has to face.

Whatever mainstream Bitcoin FUD you can think of, it needs to be the one to succeed  because if it fails, the public's trust for EVERY other cryptocurrencies goes down with it.

This success will require education of the masses, a lot of greed, and a little bit of luck. Meanwhile technologists are actively building the infrastructure to support this network of people until the next rally brings aboard a whole new fleet of adopters.