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Re:It can all go to zero by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:53PM (#16160970)
> Can you talk more about your failure case then?

The classic one. Nobody wants to pay more than a token amount for Bitcoin. Maybe central banks jacked up rates or we went into a recession or something newer and shinier came about.

Value crashes, miners find it more valuable to sell their equipment than keep mining or confirming transactions, the entire ecosystem compresses to where it was when it was more about tinkering. Maybe it remains somewhat relevant, as a curiosity. Our generation's Esperanto.

It takes no more imagination to imagine $0.0000000001 than it does to imagine $50,000.

Re:It can all go to zero by adamnemecek on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:54PM (#16160980)
Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto?
Re:It can all go to zero by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @01:57PM (#16161017)
> Are we talking about Bitcoin or all crypto?

Either. Spinning up a cryptocurrency may become as mundane as creating up a database, as silly (or illegal) as trying to market a Ponzi-based hedge fund, or simply a pedagogical tool for CS students.

There is nothing inherent to crypto that says it must hold value. Markets are moody.

Re:It can all go to zero by chocolatebunny on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @02:04PM (#16161113)
There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value.
Re:It can all go to zero by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @02:07PM (#16161149)
> There's nothing inherent to anything that says that anything must hold value

Yet you will find claims, on this thread, that Bitcoin becoming worthless is not possible.

Re:It can all go to zero by adamnemecek on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @02:44PM (#16161581)
I'm not saying it's not possible, like that the possibility is zero, all I'm saying is that it's not that much more likely that the same happening with other things. And like Bitcoin is actually resistant to some of the factors that could make other things go to zero. All I'm saying, there's a little too much "BTC will be zero, I was it in a Hollywood movie" and not enough of "BTC will go to zero if the following scenarios happened. It will go to the moon if these happened". I wont see these since these don't go with the preconceived notions and one might actually have to understand "economics of online", international relations, cryptography, networking and like so much other shit. The people who I think are qualified to write about crypto is maybe Satoshi Nakamoto but even he didn't quite nail all of it.
Re:It can all go to zero by prostoalex on Thursday January 18, 2018 @03:24PM (#16181014)
It’s not about holding, it’s about backstop.

A company’s stock (or bond) is a right to get some compensation in case of dissolution, bankruptcy, or liquidation sale. A precious metal like gold still has a backstop value - it can be sold to electronics manufacturers to make those beautiful gold-plated audio cables. Diamonds have a backstop value of being used in boring and drilling. Vacated real estate can be converted to other uses.

All of those assets (when owned outright and not pledged) are unlikely to go to $0.

Re:It can all go to zero by twblalock on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:15PM (#16161964)
It applies to any kind of asset that derives 100% of its price from network effects rather than intrinsic value.
Re:It can all go to zero by adamnemecek on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:23PM (#16162061)
Ok. Would you say the same thing about Google stock? If people stop using Google tomorrow, the stock will plunge right?
Re:It can all go to zero by twblalock on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:32PM (#16162182)
Only because the value of the underlying company would plunge as well, due to loss of revenue. But it wouldn't hit zero. Google would still have other products than search, a lot of valuable IP and patents, real estate, etc.
Re:It can all go to zero by klodolph on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @06:07PM (#16163701)
A company’s stock hits zero easily, even when the company has assets. Add up valuable real estate and subtract liabilities. Owning the stock doesn’t put you at the front of the line when the company is liquidating.
Re:It can all go to zero by adamnemecek on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:39PM (#16162271)
I meant google as a company. Very little of Google's value is in real estate. Do they even own all of their offices?
Re:It can all go to zero by cableshaft on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @04:24PM (#16162766)
I can tell you for sure that they don't. I know people in corporate real estate that won a bid to lease corporate real estate to Google recently. But that's true of almost all offices of major corporations. Very few of them own their own buildings, except maybe a headquarters here or there. They pretty much all lease.
Re:It can all go to zero by twblalock on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @04:48PM (#16163021)
> I meant google as a company.

I'm not sure what difference this makes.

As you can see here, Google has billions of assets, of which $19.7 billion are buildings.

Re:It can all go to zero by adamnemecek on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @05:02PM (#16163128)
Which is only a fraction of google and no one buys google for their real estate.
Re:It can all go to zero by twblalock on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @07:56PM (#16164520)
That's beside the point. The stock won't go to zero because it represents a share of ownership in a company that has billions of dollars more in assets than in liabilities. Real estate is just one of the many assets.

Edit: I thought I posted a link to Google's balance sheet in my parent comment, but apparently I left it out: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/goog/financials/...