If you are waiting for the "despair phase" to buy like in 2011 consider this

[DieJohnny]

I will probably get bored and sell all my Bitcoins in Dec 2016. That is when everyone should buy.

I will let you all know if it happens sooner.

[toknormal]

The "blockchain technology" (the concept of a distributed ledger) has potential, sure, but:

1. Being forced to adopt a currency full of limitations and problems just because of the ledger is not gonna work.
2. the bitcoin blockchain is just an example of a distributed ledger, other protocols already exists today (and will of course exist in the future) that don't have the ridiculous limitations of bitcoin the currency and the bitcoin blockchain (and I don't want to go through that again, already discussed to death).

At least thats a bit more reasonably argued than the dismissive slamming that's characterised your posts of the last couple of months.

I don't doubt there will be diversity and more successful technologies in the space. But we're talking about money here - there have already been a flotilla of far more advanced 'coins' going up against Bitcoin and they haven't even made a dent in its marketcap. They're more advanced in almost every respect - speed of confirmation, anonymity, mining algo, non-mining algo, trading bells & whistle's like assets.

The reason they haven't made a dent is because bitcoin is currently seen in the role of a kind of crypto reserve through which the rest of the economy is valued. It doesn't need 'high tech' for that, it just needs to exist. 20 minute confirmations are fine. Banks take up to a couple of days to move money around.

None of us know the future, so I accept your point that this may not be the case in 10 years time or even 2. But a picture is emerging of alternative blockchains for practical use and Bitcoin as the reserve (demonstrated by the simple fact that the price of every alt coin is measured in Bitcoin, even the USD value is calculated by factoring through Bitcoin because it's the only one with a USD gateway to speak of). If that picture continues to consolidate then there's a good chance that it will be here in 10 years time regardless of what technology we use to buy our cornflakes.

[toknormal]

Bitcoin has attracted a lulzy menagerie of self-important attention whores

Sure has 

[NotLambchop]

Bitcoin has attracted a lulzy menagerie of self-important attention whores

Sure has  

Yup.  And major scumbags, and petty criminals.  With vice-chairman of Bitcoin Foundation doing time for money laundering, and an ex-con for Bitcoin Jesus, you expected favorable press coverage?  Top kek

[toknormal]

Sorry, didn't see your first post....

When studying the anatomy of a bubble, a linear chart tells you a lot more than a log one

Maybe you didn't read my post properly but I said that a logarithmic chart displays proportional changes consistently in a way that a linear one doesn't. That's the whole point of a logarithmic scale - to study relative growth.

In the case of BTC, the "previous bubbles" like the 2011 one was done when market cap and price were RIDICULOUSLY lower and all it took to pump it was a little injection of fiat (aka, one or two deep pocket entities simply buying in).
What happened in 2011 is basically noise in the grand scheme of things.

That selective view happens to suit your argument. You could apply it just as selectively to any growth stage in an asset. In relative terms (as you've also pointed out later in your post) the stage we're at now is also one of 'pocket entities' relative to any major traded stock, The trend still holds.

"Massive amount" in venture capital? Less than a billion is not a massive amount, and venture capital is by definition something that can all fail miserably, like the insanely high number of bitcoin related start-ups that already failed. I am sure I don't need to show you a list of that...

"Infrastructure" in the bitcoin space is mostly smokescreen, and "adoption" is basically merchants accepting USD from a bitcoin dump through Bitpay (from people that probably ALREADY OWN BTC) and people wanting to gamble with the speculation aspect of bitcoin.

More than a year of bear market and being down more than 70% from the ATH and still being there with no signs of recovery is not a "healthy correction" in a "healthy market".
Especially considering that today a lot more people are aware of BTC (compared to 2011 when pretty much nobody was even aware of its existence, BIG DIFFERENCE).

I can probably agree with a lot of that observation but don't draw the same conclusions.

For a start, most people "are aware of BTC" through its infamy, not its qualities. So any growth is probably in spite of that promotion, not because of it. Secondly, although "less than a billion" is small in terms of VC amounts, it's downright huge when you consider the 'long shot' nature of the proposition and it's 5 times what it was last year.

People had been trying to do this for about a quarter of a century before 2009. Bitcoin was nowhere near the first but it was the one that worked. How it pans out ultimately remains to be seen and god knows how many times it's demise has been declared "final", but if it doesn't go to zero in the next couple of months then all bets are off because the longer this list gets with said event not happening, the more dug in it's going to get.

P.S. Here's another one that can be added to the list....you might enjoy his commentary more than mine  

http://blogs.reuters.com/edward-hadas/2014/01/08/an-early-obituary-for-bitcoin/

[semaforo]

[3] - that this year's drop in valuation represents the cost of a "rights of passage" phase. Bitcoin has been chewed up by the media, kicked in the groins by MtGox, goaded by rumour such as the 'malliability episode', taken a hammering in the markets and yet come out of all of this without a scratch technically. The fact that it's still "alive" at all and still floating well above most of 2013's all time high is not going to go unnoticed in years to come. This year's experience gives Bitcoin massive stock value in terms of trust because no other coin has gone through this experiment and taken the hammering that Bitcoin has. They only way that could happen is if Bitcoin went to zero and we started all over again with a new 'leader'. Whatever the markets say, that still looks extremely unlikely to happen right now

  Good point. As many have observed, all bitcoin really has to do to thrive is not die.

[semaforo]

Example:


The internet was an amazing invention that changed the world.
The dotcom bubble was just that, a bubble.

   Unless you consider google or amazon, but then bitcoin is not a company, bitcoin is the innovation. Another such technology based speculative boom would be railway or telecommunication, but honestly, bitcoin has the potential to add more value to the global economy than railroads or cellphones when the full extent of the inefficency of fiat is considered. Not to mention lost opportunities due to politically motivated embargoes that benefit only a few elite who happen to bankroll some influential governments...

   

[pattu1]

Example:

The internet was an amazing invention that changed the world.
The dotcom bubble was just that, a bubble.

   Unless you consider google or amazon, but then bitcoin is not a company, bitcoin is the innovation. Another such technology based speculative boom would be railway or telecommunication, but honestly, bitcoin has the potential to add more value to the global economy than railroads or cellphones when the full extent of the inefficency of fiat is considered. Not to mention lost opportunities due to politically motivated embargoes that benefit only a few elite who happen to bankroll some influential governments...

Bitcoin's potential might be huge, but right now what is noticeable is the huge losses staring at us. 

[semaforo]

This is the reason Jews are often better investors. The strong history and intergenerational sense of group identity makes them better able to invest multigenerationally and weather business cycles.

Contrast to Keynes' famous: "In the long run, we're all dead."

[semaforo]

This is still not as bad as the crash from $30 to $2.

[jubalix]

yeah I don't think tulips solved the byzantine generals problem or could be configures easily as a trustless distributed network. But hey that's just me.

[fonsie]

^^^^^

You two didn't get the point of the thread.
Too bad.

LMFAO,  "There was a point" lol

[Son0fLamb]

yeah I don't think tulips solved the byzantine generals problem or could be configures easily as a trustless distributed network. But hey that's just me.

Solving the Byzantine generals problem is a pointless when you have no armies.
If you're impressed with trustless distributed networks which manage to solve it, there's a whole bevy of >>>/altcoins/.
Enjoy "investing" in them.

If I'm not being clear, I'll spell it out:  No one but a handful of paranoid libers *care* about money being decentralized.  Normal people just want money that
1) Is simple to use
2) Is accepted everywhere
3) Doesn't lose 75% of its buying power a year.

Bitcoin fails all three.  So now you're in the know

[LittleDigger]

yeah I don't think tulips solved the byzantine generals problem or could be configures easily as a trustless distributed network. But hey that's just me.

Solving the Byzantine generals problem is a pointless when you have no armies.
If you're impressed with trustless distributed networks which manage to solve it, there's a whole bevy of >>>/altcoins/.
Enjoy "investing" in them.

If I'm not being clear, I'll spell it out:  No one but a handful of paranoid libers *care* about money being decentralized.  Normal people just want money that
1) Is simple to use
2) Is accepted everywhere
3) Doesn't lose 75% of its buying power a year.

Bitcoin fails all three.  So now you're in the know

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal how Oliver Bussman CIO of the Swiss bank USB was saying block chain technology can be used for financial instruments :
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/10/27/ubs-cio-blockchain-technology-can-massively-simplify-banking/
Pretty sure he said "Just like tulips" of course you can have side chains on tulips, for these financial instruments, unlike Bitcoin, so they are actually better...

[pitham1]

yeah I don't think tulips solved the byzantine generals problem or could be configures easily as a trustless distributed network. But hey that's just me.

Solving the Byzantine generals problem is a pointless when you have no armies.
If you're impressed with trustless distributed networks which manage to solve it, there's a whole bevy of >>>/altcoins/.
Enjoy "investing" in them.

If I'm not being clear, I'll spell it out:  No one but a handful of paranoid libers *care* about money being decentralized.  Normal people just want money that
1) Is simple to use
2) Is accepted everywhere
3) Doesn't lose 75% of its buying power a year.

Bitcoin fails all three.  So now you're in the know

You are looking at Bitcoin at a point in time. Think of the potential.

[NotHatinJustTrollin]

Sooooooooooooo did anybody listen?
Or we losing fortunes here?





Looks like we are on track.





[/img




This is not a joke you fools, people are losing actual real money over this shit.

[Richard Branson]

That they are losing money is best for them.
They call it filthy fiat. So better get rid of it.

[DeadCoin]

Sooooooooooooo did anybody listen?
Or we losing fortunes here?



Looks like we are on track.



This is not a joke you fools, people are losing actual real money over this shit.

I wish people's thoughts of that time were somehow documented so we could read about "cheap tulips"

I also hope this forum will exist 10 years from now for educational purposes, but somehow I doubt it, when you enter bitcointalk you'll probably see this

[NotHatinJustTrollin]

Yeah, once this whole thing collapses, there will be silence.

They should put bitcointalk thread pages in a museum when this is all over.




Let's play "Spot the difference", shall we?








Before (when I posted the thread)
   



After
[/img



Congratulations into sucking in noobs who listen to your advice and they hodl.

[CoinsCoinsEverywhere]

Especially during crashes and bubbles, it's important to try to keep both sides of the trade in perspective, as well as all the factors that could be in play or may be in the future.  Right now, nobody really knows what the state of bitcoin will be ten years from now, or what the price will be.  If they did, the price would already be there.

Bull case: a lot of money has been invested in bitcoin businesses in the last couple years, so it has some decent support.  There are still a lot of people who believe that bitcoin will succeed, and will likely buy in if the price drops low enough.  It's also important to consider that all it takes is one large investor (individual/group/institution) who has several million dollars to spend and the price could sky-rocket.  I would also think that some of the richer investors and businesspeople would start to defend their stake in the bitcoin economy by trying to manipulate the price higher.

Bear case: Bitcoin is still fairly new and has issues that need to be worked out.  A lot of financial institutions and money processors have been working on fast, efficient ways of sending money from one person to another.  These could compete with bitcoin and keep bitcoin less attractive.  You also have the unfriendliness of some governments toward bitcoin.  All it would take is the US government coming out with crushing regulations or an outright ban, and bitcoin could die very quickly.  It's also possible that if the price doesn't recover enough soon enough, many miners may stop mining, and block times could skyrocket, making mining that much less attractive.  Bitcoin could die simply due to such a technical issue (although that could possibly be fixed if enough of the community agrees to an updated algorithm/block time).

So there are lots of good points on both sides.  The first and best thing you can do is to recognize and accept that you cannot predict with certainty which way bitcoin will go.