Bitcoin all time high and the hoarding theory. (Poll included)

[maok]

... and thanks to Bitcoin, yeah and thanks to you as well for joining and making my investment worth more.


Some pictures from Today's Trip : http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/workout/mmitech/e0pk4sh2amjegqno

translation: eat a dick.

Is it so expensive to wander in the woods nowadays that you need an investment ? :-)

Your investment isn't worth more because new users joined, but because Bitcoin is FINITE(current users will value 1 btc more tomorrow than they do today) & miners PAID MUCH MORE for their mining equipment & electricity bills(so they won't sell their mined bitcoins for less than it would take to recover their invesment). You understand Bitcoin worse than a newbie. You're really pathetic.

you need some time to understand the whole picture, but whatever....it is not expensive to go to the woods but it is expensive to quit your job and have have time to spend with your family doing things you love anytime, well this is*priceless*.

you are still attacking me, you didn't provide a single valid argument against my arguments, another stupid post and you will go on my ignore list.

I don't know what you call a valid argument but you're wrong thinking I'm here to change your mind, your mind is already set so at least I can show to others how wrong you are.

[oda.krell]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

The term "pyramid scheme" is charged, and often equated with "Ponzi scheme".

At least as an investment, Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme (though not a Ponzi scheme), in the sense that the earlier you got in, the more your investment will be worth, and without new blood entering, your investment doesn't grow.

The big difference to the usual pyramid schemes though is that in our case, it is just the bootstrapping phase of a peer to peer currency/store of wealth. In other words: it has to be a pyramid scheme, because it needs to start from nothing, and aims to grow to capture a huge market.

[maok]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

The term "pyramid scheme" is charged, and often equated with "Ponzi scheme".

At least as an investment, Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme (though not a Ponzi scheme), in the sense that the earlier you got in, the more your investment will be worth, and without new blood entering, your investment doesn't grow.

The big difference to the usual pyramid schemes though is that in our case, it is just the bootstrapping phase of a peer to peer currency/store of wealth. In other words: it has to be a pyramid scheme, because it needs to start from nothing, and aims to grow to capture a huge market.

Lets say an very early adopter has paid lots of money for his mining equipment and bills but has chosen not to sell any of his bitcoins. If tomorrow bitcoin price collapses he will have a worse faith than someone who joined a year later than him but sold his bitcoins. Therefore In order to call it a pyramid scheme those early adopters should
1. make a financial gain bigger than the adopters that joined after him
 and
2. have a GUARANTEED PROFIT from the fact that others joined later. In our early adopter case neither is true. This could be the case with many bitcoiners which haven't yet recovered their investment which they made into mining while others who traded on the exchanges but joined later than them made much more money.

Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because
3. there's not a level of differentiation between joining dates of participants, only that you acquire more knowledge of the inner workings of Bitcoin.
also
4. you don't have to make a payment to join, you can merely offer your services in return for bitcoins and doesn't require you to buy or mine them, hence no initial payment is required for you to join. Overstock for example keeps 10% of bitcoins for their products. They haven't investment anything into bitcoin but still they can interact with some of the earliest adopters without Bitcoin making any distinctions between them.

[JayJuanGee]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

of course it is, do your math and grow up.

Many times, Oda makes decent and reasonable points in his posts; however, this does NOT seem to be one of his reasonable posts. 

For some reason Oda feels it is necessary to support mmitech in his various posts on this topic, and it is possible that Oda has NOT either read the previous posts or does NOT understand the situation.

Personally, I do NOT think any of us give a flying fuck what mmitech does with his BTC investment or his investment choices.  Several postings in this thread, and in the other thread that mmitech was posting on this topic, mmitech has done a real inadequate job in communicating tone and content, and mmitech has been very confrontational in his approach to respond to other posts.  It seem like mmitech unable to control himself - his emotions, reactions and defensiveness, and it seem like, he is just a bad communicator.

Oda's suggestion that mmitech is NOT at fault in causing the situation seems to be misplaced.  To me it seems like either Oda does NOT understand the situation b/c he has NOT read the various relevant posts or has some kind of attachment to mmitech.

[mmitech]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

The term "pyramid scheme" is charged, and often equated with "Ponzi scheme".

At least as an investment, Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme (though not a Ponzi scheme), in the sense that the earlier you got in, the more your investment will be worth, and without new blood entering, your investment doesn't grow.

The big difference to the usual pyramid schemes though is that in our case, it is just the bootstrapping phase of a peer to peer currency/store of wealth. In other words: it has to be a pyramid scheme, because it needs to start from nothing, and aims to grow to capture a huge market.

Lets say an very early adopter has paid lots of money for his mining equipment and bills but has chosen not to sell any of his bitcoins. If tomorrow bitcoin price collapses he will have a worse faith than someone who joined a year later than him but sold his bitcoins. Therefore In order to call it a pyramid scheme those early adopters should
1. make a financial gain bigger than the adopters that joined after him
 and
2. have a GUARANTEED PROFIT from the fact that others joined later. In our early adopter case neither is true. This could be the case with many bitcoiners which haven't yet recovered their investment which they made into mining while others who traded on the exchanges but joined later than them made much more money.

Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because
3. there's not a level of differentiation between joining dates of participants, only that you acquire more knowledge of the inner workings of Bitcoin.
also
4. you don't have to make a payment to join, you can merely offer your services in return for bitcoins and doesn't require you to buy or mine them, hence no initial payment is required for you to join. Overstock for example keeps 10% of bitcoins for their products. They haven't investment anything into bitcoin but still they can interact with some of the earliest adopters without Bitcoin making any distinctions between them.

-well 4 years ago when they first wanted to valuate Bitcoin they took the mining cost average as an entry price, the demand was low so that was somehow fair, $1 was worth around 1300BTC but today the mining cost doesn't have so much to do with the Bitcoin valuation, it is supply and demand what controls the price today, lets say you bought an ASIC for $10K which would mine around 10BTC in its life time, the price of Bitcoin has to be more than $1000 for you to break even not to mention the costs of mining and the profit you wish to acquire, the statement above means that the price of Bitcoin has to be $1000 for you to break even and not should be, the price of Bitcoin will be where the demand meets the supply or what is the best bidder is willing to pay, to make it easy to understand: If I mined my coins 2 years ago, the mining cost for a bitcoin was less than $5, and if I dumped now I would ruin your investment and still make huge profit, this is one bad side of hoarding.


1- anyone joins before you will make more money than you and everyone will follow (pyramid scheme), for example if you joined in 2010 when Bitcoin was worth pennies and invested $1000 you would make more than someone who joined in 2012 and invested $1000 when the price was $10 and he himself would make more than someone who joined summer 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was at $100 which also would make more that someone who joined November 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was $1000..


2- only Miners who started mining last year in the ASIC era lost investments or didn't make ROI in terms of Bitcoin (except avalon Batch1 customers and ASIC manufacturers), I mined with graphics cards and made a decent profit, then I retired my miners mid last year. and not all adopters who joined last year lost money, I happen to know many people who joined from January-September 2013 that made good profits, only people who bought at more than $700 are losing now and have to wait for their investment to pay back. and for that to happen pray for a new wave of adopters to join ASAP.

3- of course there is a difference in joining date, look at 1 ( my initial investment was around 3000€) for the same investment today (in terms of Bitcoin cost) you wouldn't come close to what the same investment would make you if invested 2 years ago.

4- a merchant accepting Bitcoin as payment and holding the bitcoin is the same as a new user joining, you have to understand what is money and why money have value, so merchants are exchanging goods and services for Bitcoin which give Bitcoin a value against these goods and services. same goes for your Fiat, it holds value only when you exchange it for goods or services otherwise you hold just a peace of paper or a promise from your government that paper has a purchasing power, but we all know that merchants doesn't keep the Bitcoins and chose and cash out the payment received with payment processors for zero risk, they add Bitcoin only because of a new userbase which is worst for Bitcoin price especial now that the adoption is declining.

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

of course it is, do your math and grow up.

....bla...bla...bla..bla....

you are off-topic...again.

[oda.krell]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

of course it is, do your math and grow up.

Many times, Oda makes decent and reasonable points in his posts; however, this does NOT seem to be one of his reasonable posts.  

For some reason Oda feels it is necessary to support mmitech in his various posts on this topic, and it is possible that Oda has NOT either read the previous posts or does NOT understand the situation.

Personally, I do NOT think any of us give a flying fuck what mmitech does with his BTC investment or his investment choices.  Several postings in this thread, and in the other thread that mmitech was posting on this topic, mmitech has done a real inadequate job in communicating tone and content, and mmitech has been very confrontational in his approach to respond to other posts.  It seem like mmitech unable to control himself - his emotions, reactions and defensiveness, and it seem like, he is just a bad communicator.

Oda's suggestion that mmitech is NOT at fault in causing the situation seems to be misplaced.  To me it seems like either Oda does NOT understand the situation b/c he has NOT read the various relevant posts or has some kind of attachment to mmitech.

Or both.

Would be preferable if all sides could tone down a bit... I really don't see the reason for all the aggressiveness.


Anyway...

@maok

I understand your point about early investors also being the ultimate risk takers. However, that wasn't my point, to claim that there is a guaranteed profit. Neither is there one, btw, for the 2nd line of investors in a malicious pyramid scheme.

I'll try to paraphrase to clarify my point: the ultimate goal of Bitcoin as it is widely understood is reaching a capitalization that does not only represent the intrinsic value of the transaction network itself, but represents the global economic output (or a fraction thereof).

To get there, Bitcoin needs to successively reach global acceptance. Any speculative value in excess of the current usage + acceptance level will melt away should it ever become apparent that global acceptance isn't attainable. In that case, the earliest investors will quite likely sit on a healthy profit, while the latest investors might well face a substantial loss.

So far, no different from a stock, right? The difference is what I describe in the 2nd paragraph: stocks only measure the intrinsic value of the company they represent (plus hype, plus some industry wide multiplier perhaps). They don't require a growing user and investor base to hold a price (unless the price was vastly inflated by speculative mania). Bitcoin, from day one of trading, has been understood as a global peer to peer currency -- and its speculative value represented that. Should our little experiment ever fall short of our expectations for good, the price deflation would probably be so vast that at least the last 2 waves of investors would face a loss.

tl;dr Intensionally, you are right: Bitcoin isn't a pyramid. My claim is that extensionally, it is indistinguishable up to the point where it succeeds.

[piramida]

anyone joins before you will make more money than you and everyone will follow (pyramid scheme), for example if you joined in 2010 when Bitcoin was worth pennies and invested $1000 you would make more than someone who joined in 2012 and invested $1000 when the price was $10 and he himself would make more than someone who joined summer 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was at $100 which also would make more that someone who joined November 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was $1000..

That is some silly nonsense, like the rest of your posts! So someone who would join now will "make" (whatever you understand by that) two times more than somebody who joined in November last year! The pyramid is upside down!

[mmitech]

anyone joins before you will make more money than you and everyone will follow (pyramid scheme), for example if you joined in 2010 when Bitcoin was worth pennies and invested $1000 you would make more than someone who joined in 2012 and invested $1000 when the price was $10 and he himself would make more than someone who joined summer 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was at $100 which also would make more that someone who joined November 2013 and invested $1000 when the price was $1000..

That is some silly nonsense, like the rest of your posts! So someone who would join now will "make" (whatever you understand by that) two times more than somebody who joined in November last year! The pyramid is upside down!

you just think it is upside down, I look at the long term of things and you look at the short ones...

[maok]

I understand your point about early investors also being the ultimate risk takers. However, that wasn't my point, to claim that there is a guaranteed profit. Neither is there one, btw, for the 2nd line of investors in a malicious pyramid scheme.

I'll try to paraphrase to clarify my point: the ultimate goal of Bitcoin as it is widely understood is reaching a capitalization that does not only represent the intrinsic value of the transaction network itself, but represents the global economic output (or a fraction thereof).

To get there, Bitcoin needs to successively reach global acceptance. Any speculative value in excess of the current usage + acceptance level will melt away should it ever become apparent that global acceptance isn't attainable. In that case, the earliest investors will quite likely sit on a healthy profit, while the latest investors might well face a substantial loss.

So far, no different from a stock, right? The difference is what I describe in the 2nd paragraph: stocks only measure the intrinsic value of the company they represent (plus hype, plus some industry wide multiplier perhaps). They don't require a growing user and investor base to hold a price (unless the price was vastly inflated by speculative mania). Bitcoin, from day one of trading, has been understood as a global peer to peer currency -- and its speculative value represented that. Should our little experiment ever fall short of our expectations for good, the price deflation would probably be so vast that at least the last 2 waves of investors would face a loss.

tl;dr Intensionally, you are right: Bitcoin isn't a pyramid. My claim is that extensionally, it is indistinguishable up to the point where it succeeds.

I can't see how even extensionally we can call Bitcoin a pyramid scheme. Just because it needs a growing user base, doesn't mean that those late investors will have more to lose than the early ones. Lets say an investor bought 100 bitcoins last November at $1000, and I buy 100 bitcoins now at $500, who will have more to lose ? Me or the early investor ? The claim that once the user base grows so does the price is false, just take the last 6 months as an example. A pyramid scheme would clearly favour the early investor. Indeed if the price will rise so does the risk of the late investors but thats the nature of a deflationary monetary asset, just like gold, but unlike gold there's no one who sets the price each morning based on their subjective view.

[Erdogan]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

The term "pyramid scheme" is charged, and often equated with "Ponzi scheme".

At least as an investment, Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme (though not a Ponzi scheme), in the sense that the earlier you got in, the more your investment will be worth, and without new blood entering, your investment doesn't grow.

The big difference to the usual pyramid schemes though is that in our case, it is just the bootstrapping phase of a peer to peer currency/store of wealth. In other words: it has to be a pyramid scheme, because it needs to start from nothing, and aims to grow to capture a huge market.

[JayJuanGee]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

of course it is, do your math and grow up.

....bla...bla...bla..bla....

you are off-topic...again.

Yes, it helps to move these communications in a productive direction if you delete the contents of my posts, then you do NOT need to respond b/c you have therefore unilaterally defined the direction of the conversation.  Congratulations on your abilities,  



NOT.         


Edited above for clarification(s).

[JayJuanGee]

What I'm trying to say is, some amount of disagreement is to be expected. But, yeah, the aggressive, personal tone that developed pretty soon isn't your fault.

Do you concur with him that Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme ?

I have nothing against someone who knows how to make money & diversify his/her portfolio, but when someone talks nonsense its worth pointing that out to them.

of course it is, do your math and grow up.

Many times, Oda makes decent and reasonable points in his posts; however, this does NOT seem to be one of his reasonable posts.  

For some reason Oda feels it is necessary to support mmitech in his various posts on this topic, and it is possible that Oda has NOT either read the previous posts or does NOT understand the situation.

Personally, I do NOT think any of us give a flying fuck what mmitech does with his BTC investment or his investment choices.  Several postings in this thread, and in the other thread that mmitech was posting on this topic, mmitech has done a real inadequate job in communicating tone and content, and mmitech has been very confrontational in his approach to respond to other posts.  It seem like mmitech unable to control himself - his emotions, reactions and defensiveness, and it seem like, he is just a bad communicator.

Oda's suggestion that mmitech is NOT at fault in causing the situation seems to be misplaced.  To me it seems like either Oda does NOT understand the situation b/c he has NOT read the various relevant posts or has some kind of attachment to mmitech.

Or both.

O.k... I should have put an "and/or" in there instead of an "or."

Would be preferable if all sides could tone down a bit... I really don't see the reason for all the aggressiveness.

Sometimes these matters need to run their course, and the record should speak for itself regarding the tone.  To me, it seems that there is NOT too much more to say between mmitech and me, but surely topics (or posts) by either of us may cause additional responses by the other... at least there seems to be a potential for such.  I don't especially feel any continued need to pursue the subject or related subjects, but I cannot guarantee that some post may NOT prompt me to raise such subject or feel a need to respond.


 

[mmitech]

Yes, it helps to move these communications in a productive direction if you delete the contents of my posts, then you do NOT need to respond b/c you have therefore unilaterally defined the direction of the conversation.  Congratulations on your abilities,  

NOT.        

Edited above for clarification(s).

I didn't give any advice or any guidance about any investment, I decided upon my personal beliefs, but only when you insisted about knowing I told you, as far as I am concerned it is still a personal choice that somehow you don't like !!!! so next time you start writing about how my believes and my values and my personal choices doesn't fit your logic or the thread logic you must remember that they involves me and only me and they don't effect your life or the life of anyone except me.... got it ? this is where our freedom of choice comes from and no one should cross the lines. your freedom stops when others freedom starts.

[oda.krell]

I understand your point about early investors also being the ultimate risk takers. However, that wasn't my point, to claim that there is a guaranteed profit. Neither is there one, btw, for the 2nd line of investors in a malicious pyramid scheme.

I'll try to paraphrase to clarify my point: the ultimate goal of Bitcoin as it is widely understood is reaching a capitalization that does not only represent the intrinsic value of the transaction network itself, but represents the global economic output (or a fraction thereof).

To get there, Bitcoin needs to successively reach global acceptance. Any speculative value in excess of the current usage + acceptance level will melt away should it ever become apparent that global acceptance isn't attainable. In that case, the earliest investors will quite likely sit on a healthy profit, while the latest investors might well face a substantial loss.

So far, no different from a stock, right? The difference is what I describe in the 2nd paragraph: stocks only measure the intrinsic value of the company they represent (plus hype, plus some industry wide multiplier perhaps). They don't require a growing user and investor base to hold a price (unless the price was vastly inflated by speculative mania). Bitcoin, from day one of trading, has been understood as a global peer to peer currency -- and its speculative value represented that. Should our little experiment ever fall short of our expectations for good, the price deflation would probably be so vast that at least the last 2 waves of investors would face a loss.

tl;dr Intensionally, you are right: Bitcoin isn't a pyramid. My claim is that extensionally, it is indistinguishable up to the point where it succeeds.

I can't see how even extensionally we can call Bitcoin a pyramid scheme. Just because it needs a growing user base, doesn't mean that those late investors will have more to lose than the early ones. Lets say an investor bought 100 bitcoins last November at $1000, and I buy 100 bitcoins now at $500, who will have more to lose ? Me or the early investor ? The claim that once the user base grows so does the price is false, just take the last 6 months as an example. A pyramid scheme would clearly favour the early investor. Indeed if the price will rise so does the risk of the late investors but thats the nature of a deflationary monetary asset, just like gold, but unlike gold there's no one who sets the price each morning based on their subjective view.

I think I understand your point, but I'm not sure you understand mine: I am not claiming Bitcoin as an investment is a malicious pyramid a.k.a. a Ponzie. I am however pointing out that the user base/acceptance growth requirements placed on the market by the huge enthusiasm of the early adopters (i.e. us) and the extremely ambitious goals resemble that of a pyramid: we must grow at an exponential rate, or the experiment will probably fail. Good thing then that, so far, exponential growth in all the key metrics holds.<sup>(*)


(*)</sup> That's not an endorsement of extrapolation from linear regression over log price. I continue to believe that this is way too crude (and imprecise) to be considered a useful predictor of future price for any practical purposes (i.e. trading).

[JayJuanGee]

Yes, it helps to move these communications in a productive direction if you delete the contents of my posts, then you do NOT need to respond b/c you have therefore unilaterally defined the direction of the conversation.  Congratulations on your abilities,  



NOT.        


Edited above for clarification(s).

I didn't give any advice or any guidance about any investment, I decided upon my personal beliefs, but only when you insisted about knowing I told you, as far as I am concerned it is still a personal choice that somehow you don't like !!!! so next time you start writing about how my believes and my values and my personal choices doesn't fit your logic or the thread logic you must remember that they involves me and only me and they don't effect your life or the life of anyone except me.... got it ? this is where our freedom of choice comes from and no one should cross the lines. your freedom stops when others freedom starts.

YES..... You are amazing mmitech... just keep up with your non-responses by merely referring back to earlier non-responses.

Seems as if you are having trouble really engaging with the topic... and really the whole point is being lost, anyhow with the passage of time.  Let's just check back in 6 months and see whether your decision to cash out half of your BTC was a good one.  I really doubt it, but fine, that is what you want to do. 

I suspect in the mean time, you are probably going to be making various trades though, in order to muddy the waters, and there is NOTHING wrong with engaging in ongoing monitoring of ones holdings and adjusting investment behaviors in order to respond to various changes in the market... (whether expected or NOT).

[mmitech]

I understand your point about early investors also being the ultimate risk takers. However, that wasn't my point, to claim that there is a guaranteed profit. Neither is there one, btw, for the 2nd line of investors in a malicious pyramid scheme.

I'll try to paraphrase to clarify my point: the ultimate goal of Bitcoin as it is widely understood is reaching a capitalization that does not only represent the intrinsic value of the transaction network itself, but represents the global economic output (or a fraction thereof).

To get there, Bitcoin needs to successively reach global acceptance. Any speculative value in excess of the current usage + acceptance level will melt away should it ever become apparent that global acceptance isn't attainable. In that case, the earliest investors will quite likely sit on a healthy profit, while the latest investors might well face a substantial loss.

So far, no different from a stock, right? The difference is what I describe in the 2nd paragraph: stocks only measure the intrinsic value of the company they represent (plus hype, plus some industry wide multiplier perhaps). They don't require a growing user and investor base to hold a price (unless the price was vastly inflated by speculative mania). Bitcoin, from day one of trading, has been understood as a global peer to peer currency -- and its speculative value represented that. Should our little experiment ever fall short of our expectations for good, the price deflation would probably be so vast that at least the last 2 waves of investors would face a loss.

tl;dr Intensionally, you are right: Bitcoin isn't a pyramid. My claim is that extensionally, it is indistinguishable up to the point where it succeeds.

I can't see how even extensionally we can call Bitcoin a pyramid scheme. Just because it needs a growing user base, doesn't mean that those late investors will have more to lose than the early ones. Lets say an investor bought 100 bitcoins last November at $1000, and I buy 100 bitcoins now at $500, who will have more to lose ? Me or the early investor ? The claim that once the user base grows so does the price is false, just take the last 6 months as an example. A pyramid scheme would clearly favour the early investor. Indeed if the price will rise so does the risk of the late investors but thats the nature of a deflationary monetary asset, just like gold, but unlike gold there's no one who sets the price each morning based on their subjective view.

I think I understand your point, but I'm not sure you understand mine: I am not claiming Bitcoin as an investment is a malicious pyramid a.k.a. a Ponzie. I am however pointing out that the user base/acceptance growth requirements placed on the market by the huge enthusiasm of the early adopters (i.e. us) and the extremely ambitious goals resemble that of a pyramid: we must grow at an exponential rate, or the experiment will probably fail. Good thing then that, so far, exponential growth in all the key metrics holds.<sup>(*)


(*)</sup> That's not an endorsement of extrapolation from linear regression over log price. I continue to believe that this is way too crude (and imprecise) to be considered a useful predictor of future price for any practical purposes (i.e. trading).

I understand and appreciate the effort you put upon the explanation and the simplification of things, but I think we are just wasting our time here, no matter what you will write they wont like it and they wont let it go except if you tell them " Bitcoin is great it is the innovation of this century and the price will be $100K soon"  the same like Roger Ver and Andreas antonopoulos and many others told them...

[mmitech]

Yes, it helps to move these communications in a productive direction if you delete the contents of my posts, then you do NOT need to respond b/c you have therefore unilaterally defined the direction of the conversation.  Congratulations on your abilities,  



NOT.        


Edited above for clarification(s).

I didn't give any advice or any guidance about any investment, I decided upon my personal beliefs, but only when you insisted about knowing I told you, as far as I am concerned it is still a personal choice that somehow you don't like !!!! so next time you start writing about how my believes and my values and my personal choices doesn't fit your logic or the thread logic you must remember that they involves me and only me and they don't effect your life or the life of anyone except me.... got it ? this is where our freedom of choice comes from and no one should cross the lines. your freedom stops when others freedom starts.

YES..... You are amazing mmitech... just keep up with your non-responses by merely referring back to earlier non-responses.

Seems as if you are having trouble really engaging with the topic... and really the whole point is being lost, anyhow with the passage of time.  Let's just check back in 6 months and see whether your decision to cash out half of your BTC was a good one.  I really doubt it, but fine, that is what you want to do. 

I suspect in the mean time, you are probably going to be making various trades though, in order to muddy the waters, and there is NOTHING wrong with engaging in ongoing monitoring of ones holdings and adjusting investment behaviors in order to respond to various changes in the market... (whether expected or NOT).

you are so butt hurt really, I will not waste my time with your nonsense...

[JayJuanGee]

I understand your point about early investors also being the ultimate risk takers. However, that wasn't my point, to claim that there is a guaranteed profit. Neither is there one, btw, for the 2nd line of investors in a malicious pyramid scheme.

I'll try to paraphrase to clarify my point: the ultimate goal of Bitcoin as it is widely understood is reaching a capitalization that does not only represent the intrinsic value of the transaction network itself, but represents the global economic output (or a fraction thereof).

To get there, Bitcoin needs to successively reach global acceptance. Any speculative value in excess of the current usage + acceptance level will melt away should it ever become apparent that global acceptance isn't attainable. In that case, the earliest investors will quite likely sit on a healthy profit, while the latest investors might well face a substantial loss.

So far, no different from a stock, right? The difference is what I describe in the 2nd paragraph: stocks only measure the intrinsic value of the company they represent (plus hype, plus some industry wide multiplier perhaps). They don't require a growing user and investor base to hold a price (unless the price was vastly inflated by speculative mania). Bitcoin, from day one of trading, has been understood as a global peer to peer currency -- and its speculative value represented that. Should our little experiment ever fall short of our expectations for good, the price deflation would probably be so vast that at least the last 2 waves of investors would face a loss.

tl;dr Intensionally, you are right: Bitcoin isn't a pyramid. My claim is that extensionally, it is indistinguishable up to the point where it succeeds.

I can't see how even extensionally we can call Bitcoin a pyramid scheme. Just because it needs a growing user base, doesn't mean that those late investors will have more to lose than the early ones. Lets say an investor bought 100 bitcoins last November at $1000, and I buy 100 bitcoins now at $500, who will have more to lose ? Me or the early investor ? The claim that once the user base grows so does the price is false, just take the last 6 months as an example. A pyramid scheme would clearly favour the early investor. Indeed if the price will rise so does the risk of the late investors but thats the nature of a deflationary monetary asset, just like gold, but unlike gold there's no one who sets the price each morning based on their subjective view.

I think I understand your point, but I'm not sure you understand mine: I am not claiming Bitcoin as an investment is a malicious pyramid a.k.a. a Ponzie. I am however pointing out that the user base/acceptance growth requirements placed on the market by the huge enthusiasm of the early adopters (i.e. us) and the extremely ambitious goals resemble that of a pyramid: we must grow at an exponential rate, or the experiment will probably fail. Good thing then that, so far, exponential growth in all the key metrics holds.<sup>(*)


(*)</sup> That's not an endorsement of extrapolation from linear regression over log price. I continue to believe that this is way too crude (and imprecise) to be considered a useful predictor of future price for any practical purposes (i.e. trading).

I believe that expectations have a considerable amount of variance... and there is a difference between expectations and wishes...

Personally, I hope for growth that exceeds the average of my other investments (which is about 6% per year); however, I believe that BTC has a much higher potential (higher than 6% per year), and I could get as high as 10x per year if I am very lucky, but more likely the rate of growth will be much smaller than 10x, and the growth rate will probably taper off somewhat (even though the potential remains to gain considerably).  Yes, I could also lose 100% of my investment, and I am taking chances by investing in BTC. 

NONETHELESS, even though I have NOT placed on paper my calculations for the probabilities for all these various outcomes and weighed them (like what is the likelihood of -100% returns, -50%, 0%, 6%, 25%, 50%, 100%, 1000%, etc)  it seems to me that if I were to add up all the possible outcomes and the probabilities, then likely in the end I am expecting much greater than 6% per year returns, and accordingly, BTC remains a pretty decent investment for me.

Part of my point here is that I really doubt that it is fair to place every BTC investor into a box b/c each of us is making his/her own calculation concerning why we are into BTC and what risks we are taking and what are our expectations regarding returns... and accordingly, expectations can also differ from rhetoric regarding hopes of returns higher than expectations.

[JayJuanGee]

Yes, it helps to move these communications in a productive direction if you delete the contents of my posts, then you do NOT need to respond b/c you have therefore unilaterally defined the direction of the conversation.  Congratulations on your abilities,  



NOT.        


Edited above for clarification(s).

I didn't give any advice or any guidance about any investment, I decided upon my personal beliefs, but only when you insisted about knowing I told you, as far as I am concerned it is still a personal choice that somehow you don't like !!!! so next time you start writing about how my believes and my values and my personal choices doesn't fit your logic or the thread logic you must remember that they involves me and only me and they don't effect your life or the life of anyone except me.... got it ? this is where our freedom of choice comes from and no one should cross the lines. your freedom stops when others freedom starts.

YES..... You are amazing mmitech... just keep up with your non-responses by merely referring back to earlier non-responses.

Seems as if you are having trouble really engaging with the topic... and really the whole point is being lost, anyhow with the passage of time.  Let's just check back in 6 months and see whether your decision to cash out half of your BTC was a good one.  I really doubt it, but fine, that is what you want to do. 

I suspect in the mean time, you are probably going to be making various trades though, in order to muddy the waters, and there is NOTHING wrong with engaging in ongoing monitoring of ones holdings and adjusting investment behaviors in order to respond to various changes in the market... (whether expected or NOT).

you are so butt hurt really, I will not waste my time with your nonsense...

That is your choice regarding whether or NOT you choose to engage. 

I really have trouble understanding how you come to any conclusion regarding how or why I would be "butt hurt" about anything.  I tend to think that you are either lacking in vocabulary or possibly lacking in being able to hold more than one thought in your head at one time regarding potential motivations of others.  Accordingly,  probably, I should be more kind to you, except, your arrogance brings out a certain level of irritation in me which seems to cause me to be feel less sympathy for you and your situation and your motives and to be less kind towards you than what I would otherwise strive to be.

In the end, I hope you will be able to get some value out of our exchange and possibly be able to reflect upon various back and forths that we had, even though they may have been somewhat less than interactive.

[mmitech]

Yes, it helps to move these communications in a productive direction if you delete the contents of my posts, then you do NOT need to respond b/c you have therefore unilaterally defined the direction of the conversation.  Congratulations on your abilities,  



NOT.        


Edited above for clarification(s).

I didn't give any advice or any guidance about any investment, I decided upon my personal beliefs, but only when you insisted about knowing I told you, as far as I am concerned it is still a personal choice that somehow you don't like !!!! so next time you start writing about how my believes and my values and my personal choices doesn't fit your logic or the thread logic you must remember that they involves me and only me and they don't effect your life or the life of anyone except me.... got it ? this is where our freedom of choice comes from and no one should cross the lines. your freedom stops when others freedom starts.

YES..... You are amazing mmitech... just keep up with your non-responses by merely referring back to earlier non-responses.

Seems as if you are having trouble really engaging with the topic... and really the whole point is being lost, anyhow with the passage of time.  Let's just check back in 6 months and see whether your decision to cash out half of your BTC was a good one.  I really doubt it, but fine, that is what you want to do. 

I suspect in the mean time, you are probably going to be making various trades though, in order to muddy the waters, and there is NOTHING wrong with engaging in ongoing monitoring of ones holdings and adjusting investment behaviors in order to respond to various changes in the market... (whether expected or NOT).

you are so butt hurt really, I will not waste my time with your nonsense...

That is your choice regarding whether or NOT you choose to engage. 

I really have trouble understanding how you come to any conclusion regarding how or why I would be "butt hurt" about anything.  I tend to think that you are either lacking in vocabulary or possibly lacking in being able to hold more than one thought in your head at one time regarding potential motivations of others.  Accordingly,  probably, I should be more kind to you, except, your arrogance brings out a certain level of irritation in me which seems to cause me to be feel less sympathy for you and your situation and your motives and to be less kind towards you than what I would otherwise strive to be.

In the end, I hope you will be able to get some value out of our exchange and possibly be able to reflect upon various back and forths that we had, even though they may have been somewhat less than interactive.

you are now officially in my ignore list.... you are a pain in the ass, you think that you understand things but your head is totally empty.... don't respond to this because I wont see it and and I dont want to see it, you will remain in my ignore list.