BitCoin

Malthusian

ExremelyCautiousSocialist wrote: »

Why now 10 years in ? why not after 2013 bull run when in 2014 bitcoin looked pretty terrible PR wise.

Because in 2014 the ICO boom hadn't fragmented, saturated and exhausted the pool of suckers. And the adoption of superior alternatives for the non-speculative market, those who want to move money without an AML trail, e.g. Monero, have dug the bottom out of the underlying demand.

In 2014 the Bitcoin pump was largely limited to the tech community. Which allowed a second pump in 2017 because the mass market hadn't yet put their hand in and been stung. For there to be a third pump you need a new market which didn't lose their shirt in the last dump. Where is it? Africa, Vietnam and other emerging markets? Already been tapped out by OneCoin, Bitconnect et al.

dividendhero

Malthusian wrote: »

In 2014 the Bitcoin pump was largely limited to the tech community. Which allowed a second pump in 2017 because the mass market hadn't yet put their hand in and been stung. For there to be a third pump you need a new market which didn't lose their shirt in the last dump. Where is it? Africa, Vietnam and other emerging markets? Already been tapped out by OneCoin, Bitconnect et al.

Very true.

It'll be extra-terrestrial life that'll be next on the Bitcoin bandwagon:cool:

ExremelyCautiousSocialist

IDK Malthusian from a negative bubble thats going to hurt people point of view.... crypto seems to be very good at making a wild bull run.



From a positive slow growth point of view... even with things going bear the number of people who aren't just bagholders and who are involved now in 2018/19 in the bear market dwarf the numbers involved in crypto in the 2014/15 bear market.

Matthew2018

Before investing anything, go to somewhere like coinbase or coindesk see below. Look up how much the price has changed over the last month / day/ year.

https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin


As you see it is very volatile and has been dropping in price from its peak in Dec 2017 which was approaching $20,000 to somewhere today closer to $3,500.



With such volatility and overall drop in price over the last year or so, it takes a brave man to invest in Bitcoin.



I'm not that brave.

ExremelyCautiousSocialist

Both the 2013 pumps were more made up of a bunch of increasingly number of random people wanting to start mining all with a wide range of tech skills thats why people might call it more tech - this was pre ASIC miner mass production. It was more tech but its not like 2013 was tech and 2017 was not. Many thought price might not go up again after 2013 because becoming an amatuer miner was not possible anymore. You could research the types of people who got money stuck in MtGox to measure the tech nerd levels of 2013 @ https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgoxinsolvency/

parking_question_chap

ExremelyCautiousSocialist wrote: »

IDK Malthusian from a negative bubble thats going to hurt people point of view.... crypto seems to be very good at making a wild bull run.

From a positive slow growth point of view... even with things going bear the number of people who aren't just bagholders and who are involved now in 2018/19 in the bear market dwarf the numbers involved in crypto in the 2014/15 bear market.

Bagholder?

Can you just elaborate on that term please.

ExremelyCautiousSocialist

Person who has bought at higher than current market price and is left holding the bag.

danm

I do not think Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme - but at the same time, unless it becomes more broadly adopted and represents a true store of value, it will be subject to the massive volatility we have seen.


If the cost of a cup of coffee is £3, but the retailer also accepts cyptocurrencies (Coffee=1 coin) then that coin should be worth at least £3 - otherwise arbitrage will take place.


Clearly this all assume efficient markets etc; but as I have mentioned elsewhere, money is just a store of value – it is only worth what it can be exchanged for and therefore bitcoin should be no different.
Printed money is only worth what it will buy based on society norms – if everyone took their £5 notes to the BOE and asked for their ‘five pounds’ – what are they going to be given….



Money = A way to keep score of worth and value – why does bitcoin need to be anything else.

Malthusian

danm wrote: »

Printed money is only worth what it will buy based on society norms – if everyone took their £5 notes to the BOE and asked for their ‘five pounds’ – what are they going to be given….

A new five pound note.

Which you can use to pay your tax bill to the UK Government, or five pounds of any debt subject to UK law.

masonic

danm wrote: »

I do not think Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme - but at the same time, unless it becomes more broadly adopted and represents a true store of value, it will be subject to the massive volatility we have seen.

It will never become the one true broadly adopted currency. There is a hard limit on the rate of transactions that can be processed. The theoretical maximum is about 7 transactions per second. Compare that to Mastercard, who process over 1500 transactions per second on average and have the capacity to process more if needed.

You can see evidence of this limitation in the transaction fees, which spiked from a few cents up to tens of dollars or more during the mania phase of the last bubble. People have to pay more and more to get priority in a sea of transactions that there isn't capacity to process. Why would anyone pay so much in fees to simply pay for something?

Of course newer cryptocurrencies have overcome this limitation, but have others.