"At its peak, in November 2017, it briefly hit $19,783 - which means the price has fallen by about 75%."
If this were a real stock market and those were real $$$s, isn't that the kind of crash that causes great depressions or investors jumping out of windows (movie trope, but not really)
How can something so volatile possibly be worth pursuing or investing in, other then get rich quick schemes.
Investors in GM & Chrysler (considered blue-chip value stocks at the time) saw their investments go to zero when the companies declared bankruptcy in the 2009 Financial Crisis. The S&P 500 dropped 50% in the same period. PG&E stock dropped by 53% in one day last week when it was revealed that they may be responsible for the California wildfires.
Pretty much everything worth investing in is that volatile. You just either need to be greedy when other people are fearful and vice versa, or have long enough time horizons for it not to matter.
On the other hand, I would say a country's economy weren't viable if their cash had crashed.
That's actually exactly the argument I've seen from many Bitcoin proponents, ironically enough.
Sure, if the S&P/Dow/Nasdaq fell 75% people would be jumping out the window, but it's also never risen 300% in a few months like crypto did.
Crypto needs to be evaluated against other speculative investments and not against a long term vehicle like a major index.
Try 2000%, not 300%.
High volatility makes people rich -- that's the attraction. It also makes people poor.
Citation needed. The impression I get is that other than a get rich quick/MLM scheme, there isn't really anything there of interest to the general population. And I say that as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about Bitcoin and crypto in general.
Demand has crashed because speculation is much more difficult now, and it's much easier to get into a position where your only choices are (a) sell at a huge loss; or, (b) hold and hope it goes up and you can get out even. A few years ago when it was much more volatile unless you were very unlucky with your timing you didn't have to wait more than a month or two to be able to sell with substantial gains, and wait for another drop to buy back in (or buy in pieces on the way down).
DataWallet[0], for example, is building blockchain-based data hub for users to manage their data, in such a way that they (the users) retain control over it, and companies wanting access have to pay. Simplest use case: enter your contact info in 1 place only, not on every website you sign up for. More generally, I think something like this would be well-received by the public, given recent outcries around privacy, scandals in large tech companies, and the emergence of GDPR (specifically: regular people learning - perhaps for the first time - that they have a right to control the access permissions of the data they create, even on someone else's platform).
Another development of interest is Basic Attention Token[1], wherein users are essentially paid to watch ads. This project is pretty well-known so I won't say much about it other than that it does have consumer appeal.
Granted, the majority of blockchain projects don't (directly) address major problems that consumers have; rather, most address the problems that developers and/or businesses face. The hope is that some of these new technologies will enable said devs & businesses to build better products for their respective users.
[0] https://datawallet.com [1] https://basicattentiontoken.org/
Cash is already the perfect medium for exchanging small amounts of money.
Yes in person, but not over the internet. Crypto currencies definitely have potential for exchanging small amount of money there!
Now Bitcoin has much more value for me, as a tool to store money and transfer big payments. There's no easy way to transfer few thousand bucks between countries without dealing with state agencies, there's huge risk of frozen account, there's huge risk of being robbed, etc. Storing money is the same: your house could be robbed, your bank could default. Bitcoin solving those problems perfectly, aside from its fluctuating price, of course, but that couldn't be solved with algorithms anyway.
Normally when there's a demonstrated demand for something, its price doesn't go down by 75% year over year. Well, outside of government price controlling
You could be right, but it doesn't appear that the thing will be bitcoin, at least not unless it's a different thing sharing the same name.
The promise of bitcoin was a currency. But so far, it's not being used as a currency, people are treating it more like gold than cash. Until people are actually using it in day to day transactions, it's just a collectible.
Now I have been payed in Etherium by a client a couple times, but it's such a hassle. That money's just sitting around because I don't even want to deal with the exchanges.
What's your definition of there? Being able to do micro-transactions? quick transactions?
Would transaction fees matter?
Bold statement.
> Right now there isn't such a way and crypto might solve it.
weak support.
Why do people need to exchange tiny amounts of money?
EDIT for clarity: Why do people need Crypto to exchange tiny amounts of money?
My vision is you would stock a wallet with, say $50, and then authorize a few of your regular sites in your client. Every time you loaded a new story, it might deduct $.01 for example.
Perhaps not with this tech, but one similar with fast transactions and tiny fees. See Iota for example.
Shifting from an ad driven to paid publisher/subscriber model has many advantages. Ideally you'd have a tech to support it which was a) not centralized, b) anonymous customer but visible vendor, and c) low transaction fees. This rules out credit cards and bitcoin but there are others.
I dislike that fact, but I don't think most people care. So micro payments are just a way to make less money than advertising-based models.
Of the 3rd-party produced works, I assume netflix pays them some fraction of my $x.xx/month based on my viewing time.
In order to maximize "exchange of value", there needs to be a way to exchange tiny amounts of money easily. Right now there isn't such a way and crypto might solve it.