What's more interesting is that, for example, Bitcoin Cash has a similar level of on-chain activity to 2012-era Bitcoin without the interesting shops accepting it, but its price is about a hundred times higher than 2012-era Bitcoin.
I am not going to throw allegations out, but I believe there will be a day in the coming years where we read stories about organized crime and pump and dumps in this space. I believe the bitcoin forks will be at the heart of this all.
Everybody is happily singing the song of crypto while the music is going. Not sure how long it will last.
Bitcoin forks are funny because it's decentralized software with a shared database history from the time of the fork. After an update, users can choose to use one or the other. Unfortunately the incentives are warped for miners and devs, so users might not have the best possible design.
There's an excessive amount of propaganda surrounding cryptocoins because "investors" need to psychologically lure you in to buy their supply, which they've acquired for significantly lower value, lower capital, and lower computational work then you if you're starting after them.
It looks like bitcoin cash is going to be extremely useful for doing daily type transactions (ie. low dollar transactions etc.)
That is where the "scam" lies. It isn't discrediting BCH — BCH already did that to itself.
If you don’t like BCH then don’t use it, you can leave that to everyone else.
24HR Transactions:
* BTC — 328,580 [1]
* BCH — 20,255 [2]
Nope, you just see a completely pragmatic view of Ver's actions as an attack, probably formed on the r/btc sub (that he mods).
I love how you say "completely clueless" too — because it's ironically you.
Far fetched idea is that these networks were designed for this type of washing. Clean and Dirty money enters in, someones bound to walk at some point.
That's an interesting way to think about BCH. Some of the price increase is justified due to the increasing legitimization of all crypto currencies but definitely not 100x.
But today it's becoming more and more clear what it'll eventually end up being: not a payment network, not a private way of transacting, but digital (yet secure) gold. That's all Bitcoin will most likely ever be and that is totally fine.
There is something to be said about an asset that is held outside of the traditional financial system. I'm not a Bitcoin bull, but I also wouldn't be surprised if a coin hits $100,000 (or more) sometime in the next few years.
Ethereum though.. I'm more curious about how that will turn out. Seems to have many potential interesting use cases
The non-loony ETFs, Swiss vault storage, etc. Let's simplify to "the GLD ETF" [1]. This of course isn't really gold, it's paper gold (and has in fact been fractional-reserve-banked: there is far more paper gold than actual gold).
The loony gold storage: gold bars under your pillow. Unfortunately, the gold people use for payments is extremely regulated, specific grades of gold, guaranteed by a very small number of financial institutions (and numbered). Whilst at least these are obviously not oversubscribed, if you have one you can't sell it (aside from the subdivision problem), because there's no easy way to verify the guarantees, and there are an untold number of fakes in circulation.
[1] tradingview.com/e/?symbol=GLD
They're stating that "intrinsic value", e.g. gold being usable for things other than trade, is not necessary for a tradable thing to have value. It is only necessary for people to be able to trust that the thing has value and having "intrinsic value" is one way for that trust to be gained.
With cryptocurrency, it's gained with a bunch o math.
As for lightning network, let's wait and see once it's actually completed. Can Bitcoin afford to wait that long? The core developers are taking an awfully big risk when Bitcoin cash had shown that bigger blocks are not an issue.
Why bother with Bitcoin if my Bank can do it cheaper and faster, even with lightning?
Couldn't agree more. I've been following crypto since 2012. The most exciting aspect of bitcoin personally was being able to hold both cash(private/low fees) AND and an asset(scarce) on the internet without having to trust any 3rd parties. Sad to see the community is just settling on the latter (at least for now).
I don't think there's a need for two different currencies to represent both 'cash' and 'asset'. I think in the future it'll most likely be one crypto that fulfills both needs. And as of right now, I wouldn't bet on Bitcoin.
But hey, what do I know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Only if they cash out. You need new investors to be able to cash out. The wise ones smell the crash and are the first ones out. Some make it out just before the crash when the party is still going but the fires are rising. The rest burns. There is no real value in bitcoin (unlike the stock exchange or fiat money where valuable people are trapped in contracts).
There have been plenty of crashes until now, and those who "smelled it" and sold (I did) lost lots of paper profits.
There will be other crashes for sure, and it will be impossible to know if it's the BTC Apocalypse™ or the BTC Yearly Crash™ until late in the process.
Unless, of course, one belongs to the BTC-illuminati.
Either way, it's free money to me, so I try not to be too greedy...
If you're a CTO of a major company and you don't have a wallet with at least $1m in BTC in some wallet somewhere then you're risking a major disaster if someone breaks in and locks up your data.
But just because there are real uses doesn't mean that I think that the government will allow it to remain legal.
Facebook and Snap did well because they were "cooler" than their predecessors, and they had different/more uses. I think that's analogous to where I see the future of crypto
I agree that each asset class comes with risk, and that euro and dollar is currently less risky than crypto. But remember that each has its own risk. Fiat money goes down at about 2% each year, if you're in a proper economy. Did you see the quantitative easing that was done on the dollar? Scary.
Do you think people in Zimbabwe are "cashing out" to their local currency? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-15/bitcoin-s...
Some people are even "cashing out" to expensive real estate I read, not dollars.
Don't make the mistake to think euro's or dollars are the unit of value, they are not. Their price goes up and down just like everything else. History was not kind to fiat money (see French revolution for example).
Bitcoin is in a position to compete with central banks and commercial banks with fraction reserves. The chance of crypto really getting that far might be low, but it is still there, don't forget about that.
Nobody can be certain of the "bitcoin bubble", and nobody can be certain of the "worldwide bitcoin takeover of fiat money". Maybe it will end somewhere in between. It's all chances. You have to play on the risk factors of each, not on "I believe ...".
You don't cash out, you properly organize your assets.
Running around hopping on popular ideas, foaming at the mouth fearing to lose out is an unpleasant mental/emotional state of mind IMO.
The latter ones are not "rich"; they're "paper rich", which is radically different.
I think it's crucial to highlight the difference, since the BTC may be toilet paper tomorrow, or maybe not; and this is how lotteries work.
Your statement, from my understanding, is saying "if people cash out, everything will crash". That's simply not true. More so, it's not true because that's fundamentally not how markets work.
Whenever someone buys 400 BTC, that means someone else sold or "cashed out" 400 BTC. This is a highly liquid market system with many participants, not a lottery system.
I never wrote that. I've been quite specific:
> BTC may be toilet paper tomorrow, or maybe not; and this is how lotteries work.
The difference between wealth and "paper wealth", in this interpretation, is simply in the volatility of the assets.
BTC is extremely volatile both in the short and long terms, therefore being rich can't be disassociated from the cash out.
Association is the concept I'm stressing. With lowly volatile assets, one can be reasonably confident the value of the assets, so cashing out can be reasonably ignored, but with highly volatile ones, one can't, so it's all about the moment of the conversion.
Lottery has probably been a wrong term - probably gambling is better, but the concept still stands.
Who knows...the crypto that wins out might not even be invented yet.
Yeah, 50 might be more than is really needed, but there is no reason why several or more can't happily coexist, each specialized in their own way.
The fact that this is upvoted so high really shows the number of people who truly lack an understanding of an asset but are vocal in spite of that fact.
At least he understands that he doesn't understand how on earth it works and that should be grounds enough for caution.
If I didn't already have problems with how much electricity it burns for even the smallest transaction, that would have been enough to put me off it.
I apologized to him for possibly being wrong about warning him off from what looks to me like an enormous bubble, but from what I've seen outside of our own tech bubble, it's an enormous bubble that most of the buyers have little to no understanding of.
I made 1300% on Nvidia stock purchased in 2009, after that court ruling. I'm content with the money I've indirectly made off Bitcoin.
Ripple will find a use and may do quite well. But it requires more trust in a few centralized parties. It won't replace Bitcoin's primary use case as the highest security value store and world-wide settlement layer.
https://themerkle.com/ripple-labs-settles-lawsuit-with-jed-m...
I can't really think of many reasons why you would use crypto to pay for a coffee or a sandwhich if you live in the West (or frankly, even most developing nations). On the other hand, I can definitely see the utility in a censorship-resistant digital medium to store wealth. To me, this latter use case has much, much more potential to serve the unbanked (as well as the banked).
Some use cases I can think off the top of my head:
(1) You are from Syria and need to flee war and escape into Europe – however bank transfers into Europe are almost impossible if you are a common Syrian. Bitcoin allows you to take your wealth with you, in your brain, as you escape across the border, by just memorising your twelve word private key.
(2) You are from Venezuela or Zimbabwe – The government has issued capital controls and is devaluing currency by the day. You transfer your wealth into Bitcoin in order to offset capital erosion due to hyper-inflation. When the situation stabilises, you transfer your Bitcoin back into fiat.
(3) You are Saudi billionaire Al-Waleed bin Talal. The government freezes all your assets in a political coup. If you have a portion of your wealth in Bitcoin, you could protect them from government expropriation and anonymously transfer them to associates or family members abroad.
(4) You are whistleblower Julian Assance and have been cut off from the financial system as a way to censor your speech. Bitcoin allows you to have an unbreakable digital "Swiss bank account" that the authorities are not able to reach.
This reminds me of Peter Thiel's recent words about Bitcoin: "it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments."
Reference
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoin-underestimated-peter...
Trading bitcoin is speculation. It's not investing (where fundamental analysis can be useful to evaluate assets). But a lot of money can be made (and lost) by speculating. It just depends on your risk profile.
When you try to place an order on Kraken it 100% of the time on the first try gives you some generic message that says something like "We're not sure if your order went through. Check back later." So you wait a bit, refresh, and it looks like it hasn't gone through, so you enter it again. You get the same message 5 times in a row. On the 6th try, your order goes through. Sometimes you end up with 2 orders going through because one you thought didn't go through just took longer than you had the patience for.
I'm being completely serious when I say this isn't something that happens occasionally; it happens every time.
They say they're working on a new engine or something that should be out in a few months, but it's a known and annoying problem for now. Other than that, I like Kraken and agree that it seems less shady than most.
I think this is a good overview of the basic numbers and banking situation: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/09/15/2193370/crypto-tether...
Oh, like write-only memory?
It's amazing to watch the price go up as utility has gone down. In 2012 or so Bitcoin was legitimately useful. Coinbase was around so it was easy to buy. You could move it for reasonable fees / transaction times and it gave you access to Darknet Markets which offered services you couldn't get anywhere else. We also believed it to be private because law enforcement had not yet developed any block chain analysis software. Bitcoin was the only credible coin, everything else was a joke or lacked critical mass.
Now none of that is true. If you're interested in privacy you don't touch BTC with a 10 foot pole. If you want an actually usable currency with speed and low fees you use ETH or any other. And if you're a financial institution you're looking at Ripple. Oh and let's not forget all the BTC forks and exchange hacks.
Yet the price just climbs and climbs, and many people are getting quite rich. I can't say I'm not jealous, but I still won't invest because the fundamentals are all wrong. Someone will be left holding the bag.