The real price of bitcoin, less than an iphone app

[jabo38]

First, I like bitcoin, I invested in it, but in reality it is not nearly as big as some people talk it up to be.  

Fact.  Market share of bitcoin- not even 8 billion USD.
Fact.  Facebook bought Whatsapp for more than 19 billion USD.  

That means that bitcoin as a service has a value of less than half of Whatsapp, a simple text messaging app for sending free texts and pics from smartphone to smartphone.  

Yes, maybe Facebook overpaid for Whatsapp, but still...... for all the hours of development and years of coding and work done on the bitcoin code, a simple iphone/android app for sending texts is worth more.

Just something to think about.    

[NorTiaN]

Facebook and Whatsapp dont go against the governmental and banking oligarchy...
So bitcoin faces tougher oponents than FB or WA...

Thats why its currently so undervalued...
IMHO

cheers

[jabo38]

I hear you.  I am all for power being moved back to the people.  That is one reason I put money in it.  That and I think it is also under valued. 

[ns12123]

Yes, maybe this is nice topic to discuss but wait, bitcoin is much more valuable and huge then some text messaging app, so we just need to wait, this is revolution and cannot be done fast, it takes time. And market share can grow faster that we can think of.

[m3g4tr0n]

I think the real story here is that 19 billion pricetag. My WTF meter is breaking in half.

Bill gates is only worth 4.1 whatsapps.

[Dalmar]

These apps have millions of users that use it daily. Bitcoin has at most probably only 50-100k genuine active users (whales who are splitting up wallets skew data imo). So, it's not comparable at all. Also, their network effect is faster as there is less skepticism towards these apps compared to bitcoin.

Valuation is accurate at the moment, until bitcoin becomes more user friendly and secure.

[Morbo]

Facebook didn't pay so much for an app. Facebook paid so much for the users that are using it. The users and their data is the product.

[jonald_fyookball]

First, I like bitcoin, I invested in it, but in reality it is not nearly as big as some people talk it up to be.  

Fact.  Market share of bitcoin- not even 8 billion USD.
Fact.  Facebook bought Whatsapp for more than 19 billion USD.  

That means that bitcoin as a service has a value of less than half of Whatsapp, a simple text messaging app for sending free texts and pics from smartphone to smartphone.  

Yes, maybe Facebook overpaid for Whatsapp, but still...... for all the hours of development and years of coding and work done on the bitcoin code, a simple iphone/android app for sending texts is worth more.

Just something to think about.    

The valuation of whatsapp comes from it's massive user base.  Same thing with twitter.  Got nothing to do with the technology.  Most decent programmers could code something like twitter in a day.

[ThirdRenaissance]

This just shows that we are all still early adopters. Not the earliest maybe, but still pretty much at the beginning of what may yet come.

[Singlebyte]

I think the real story here is that 19 billion pricetag. My WTF meter is breaking in half.

Bill gates is only worth 4.1 whatsapps.

Damn, put in that context makes it really seem ludicrous.  Wish I was worth a 1/10000 of a stupid app!

[franky1]

whatsapp is used by multiple millions of users. and i mean MULTIPLE

bitcoin is still growing. and when bitcoin userbase gets to whatsapp/facebook userbase. then you will see a difference in the market cap.

i think the OP is just panicing because he thinks bitcoin is something that will only last 2 months, he doesn't see the big picture of the next 100 years

[johncabat]

Facebook didn't pay so much for an app. Facebook paid so much for the users that are using it. The users and their data is the product.

^^ This.  FB paid $19b for 350million - 490million (depending on which source you read) user assets.  The app means nothing to them, I mean come on they already have facebook messenger right? FB must have the in-house development skills to clone WhatsApp in a week.  But for a business who's sole purpose is to profile people for advertising $$$, slurping all those extra contact lists and mobile phone books for "who knows who" is where the value was in that deal.  And given that Bitcoin, by design, protects user anonymity with no centralized userDB, the two things don't make a suitable comparison. They placed that value on WhatsApp in terms of something like $45 per user, not the app, code or service itself. IMHO.

[drawingthesun]

If 400,000,000 people one day use Bitcoin, the value of all the bitcoins would exceed several trillion for sure.

This is once again apples to oranges.

[Singlebyte]

If 400,000,000 people one day use Bitcoin, the value of all the bitcoins would exceed several trillion for sure.

This is once again apples to oranges.

Solution: integrate Bitcoins into whatsapp.  Problem solved!

[PolarPoint]

Whatsapp is a business, it generates revenue. Looks much better in company accounts than bitcoins.

[CurbsideProphet]

I'm failing to see the correlation between Bitcoin and Facebook overpaying to takeover another company.

[cp1]

It's also less than a hamburger, since McDonalds is valued at 494942929292 quabillion dollars.

[tins]

I like this thread. It really shows how much room we still have to grow. We have not come remotely close to the peak.
This truly is the ground floor of something special with btc.

[Littleshop]

First, I like bitcoin, I invested in it, but in reality it is not nearly as big as some people talk it up to be.  

Fact.  Market share of bitcoin- not even 8 billion USD.
Fact.  Facebook bought Whatsapp for more than 19 billion USD.  

That means that bitcoin as a service has a value of less than half of Whatsapp, a simple text messaging app for sending free texts and pics from smartphone to smartphone.  

Yes, maybe Facebook overpaid for Whatsapp, but still...... for all the hours of development and years of coding and work done on the bitcoin code, a simple iphone/android app for sending texts is worth more.

Just something to think about.    

By that logic Bitcoin is worse less then the value of a website.  That website might be Facebook but it is still less then the value of a website.

Everyone knows Whatsapp was hugely overpriced and every shareholder of Facebook lost some real dollars the moment that overpriced purchase was made.

[farlack]

Whatsap also has 500,000,000 active users. Bitcoin is no where near that.