BITCOIN

tebbins

RolandFlagg said:

All bubbles burst, but as Peter Lynch once said:

“Far More Money Has Been Lost By Investors Preparing For Corrections, Or Trying To Anticipate Corrections, Than Has Been Lost In Corrections Themselves.”

He was talking about the stock market. In the .com bubble he was sceptical about technology stocks, he has warned against longshots and commodities. If you can find a quote of Lynch genuinely supporting Bitcoin I would be very surprised.

adindas

Do not forget you could also take advantage of BTC, Alt Coins price movement by buying shares in mining companies.

The one that I know quite popular and big with market cap US$1b+ MARA, RIOT. The smaller one with market cap less than US$1b, BTBT, BTCM, ARBK

But please do your own DDs before investing in any assets. Do not just believe random people on the internet.

adindas

Linton said:

adindas said:

Good to see that the discussion is going to a much higher level now No more people are saying that BTC is a scam because Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are saying so.

Those who are posting the performance of BTC on MSE are doing P&D.

If it is a scam it must be the most brilliant scam ever pertpetrated.  Just consider....

1) Guilt free massive returns especially for early adopters
2) The belief that you are cocking a snook at the establishment.
3)  friends across the world
4) A freemasonry of a secret language incomprehensible to outsiders
5) A bit of technical whizz.

what's not to like!

Anyone who engineered all of this must be a top rank economist, psychologist and software engineer.

Interesting. And you will need to be able to collaborate with hundreds of millions of people around the world as noone control a large portion of them. But conspiracy theory do exist since a few hundred years ago. I have seen a lot of this in the science fiction movies.

Some people treat BTC like stock/shares, which in fact a different asset class.

It seems that the people in SEC are full of ignorance, and easily be conned as they approved BTC to be traded as an asset. They also Approved Bitcoin ETF.

Do forget that Gary Gensler the Current SEC chief used to teach Block Chain and Money at MIT.

Not to mention a few billionaires investors, including those who understand well about Blockchain who have invested a small proportion of BTC and alt coins to diversify their assets.

Malthusian

Linton said:

Anyone who engineered all of this must be a top rank economist, psychologist and software engineer.

I think it's fair to attribute at least two out of three of those labels to Satoshi Nakamoto. Creating a virtual currency that people trade with the same enthusiasm as shiny metal was a tremendous technical achievement.

Just a shame that he wasn't enough of a genius to not lose his private keys to all the coins he mined in the early experimental phase, locking himself out of both a billion-pound fortune and the credit for his invention.

Linton

Malthusian said:

Linton said:

Anyone who engineered all of this must be a top rank economist, psychologist and software engineer.

I think it's fair to attribute at least two out of three of those labels to Satoshi Nakamoto. Creating a virtual currency that people trade with the same enthusiasm as shiny metal was a tremendous technical achievement.

Just a shame that he wasn't enough of a genius to not lose his private keys to all the coins he mined in the early experimental phase, locking himself out of both a billion-pound fortune and the credit for his invention.

Yes a major software engineering achievement but there are a lot of clever techies out there and a lot of very clever software.  However look at it as an example of social engineering.  It is brilliant.  If you wanted to create an organsation that would expand indefinitely crypto currency ticks all the boxes.  Perhaps it's a university sociology experiment that escaped into the wild!

I remember a SF short story from many years ago whereby a sociology professor did that in the little village he was visiting.  He set up a club for the locals with carefully designed rules to encourage existing members to recruit new ones.  He returned a few weeks later to find that the whole village were members, weeks further on they had spread across the state. And then......

hildosaver

What is everybody's price expectation for the top of this bull market?

Personally I'll have a sell order in at $165k and a further one at $220k and i'll be delighted if either of them hit.

RolandFlagg

People who do zero research have been talking garbage about Bitcoin for years, and it's not going to stop anytime soon.
Just got to ignore them. They will continue being wrong but never accept it.

This guy from 2013 encapsulates everything that is wrong with these people. He comes onto CNBC, talks nonsense about something he clearly doesn't understand, and they give him air time.


https://youtu.be/Jz-N7vwQwlA

P.S take a note regarding the price of Gold back then.
It's hardly moved since.

More debunking:

https://medium.com/@jbourneBTC/debunking-all-the-bitcoin-misinformation-one-by-one-54aaa2a20c4

Linton

darren232002 said:

Linton said:

I am afraid the discussion is a bit pointless as you are using technical investment terms when it appears you dont understand what they mean.

Would you like to point out which terms you are referring to and specify your definition of them?

I would like to point out that, in the post you quoted, I did not use the words 'share,' 'market capitalisation,' 'potential value,' or 'book value.' I'm assuming you are referring to the use of the word 'yield.' So, would you like to post your definition please?

From https://www.investopedia.com

What Is a Yield?

Yield refers to the earnings generated and realized on an investment over a particular period of time. It's expressed as a percentage based on the invested amount, current market value, or face value of the security.

Yield includes the interest earned or dividends received from holding a particular security. Depending on the valuation (fixed vs. fluctuating) of the security, yields may be classified as known or anticipated.

What Is the Price-to-Earnings (P/E) Ratio?

The price-to-earnings ratio (P/E ratio) is the ratio for valuing a company that measures its current share price relative to its earnings per share (EPS). The price-to-earnings ratio is also sometimes known as the price multiple or the earnings multiple.

P/E ratios are used by investors and analysts to determine the relative value of a company's shares in an apples-to-apples comparison. It can also be used to compare a company against its own historical record or to compare aggregate markets against one another or over time.

What Are Earnings?

A company's earnings are its after-tax net income. This is the company's bottom line or its profits.

Earnings are perhaps the single most important and most closely studied number in a company's financial statements. It shows a company's real profitability compared to the analyst estimates, its own historical performance, and the earnings of its competitors and industry peers.

Earnings are the main determinant of a public company's share price because they can be used in only two ways: They can be invested in the business to increase its earnings in the future, or they can be used to reward stockholders with dividends.

What Is Net Income (NI)?

Net income (NI), also called net earnings, is calculated as sales minus cost of goods sold, selling, general and administrative expenses, operating expenses, depreciation, interest, taxes, and other expenses. It is a useful number for investors to assess how much revenue exceeds the expenses of an organization. This number appears on a company's income statement and is also an indicator of a company's profitability.

So for a Yield to be a Yield it must be received as currency.

To calculate  P/E for BTC the Price per "share" is clear.  But P/E needs net income per "share" which requires sales and costs.  How would you define that for BTC? And I mean for BTC, not for the miners of BTC or the buyers of BTC.  For BTC itself.

tebbins

RolandFlagg said:

People who do zero research have been talking garbage about Bitcoin for years, and it's not going to stop anytime soon.
Just got to ignore them. They will continue being wrong but never accept it.

This guy from 2013 encapsulates everything that is wrong with these people. He comes onto CNBC, talks nonsense about something he clearly doesn't understand, and they give him air time.


https://youtu.be/Jz-N7vwQwlA

P.S take a note regarding the price of Gold back then.
It's hardly moved since.

More debunking:

https://medium.com/@jbourneBTC/debunking-all-the-bitcoin-misinformation-one-by-one-54aaa2a20c4

A news clip from 2013, and a link from medium.com pwn all criticism of Bitcoin?
Please don't assume I've done zero research or am automatically factually wrong because I disagree with your cult. You're just embarrassing yourself as you still haven't explained any of the basics like how Bitcoin isn't a ponzi scheme, generates a yield or profit.

Linton

mark55man said:

if anyone says BTC can go to zero is a reason for not investing then ask them about Enron and more recently Carillion (* other bankrupt companies are available *)  - although to be fair - most investors mainly invest in index funds and that's much less likely to crater

Your "to be fair" rather invalidates your point.  Yes investing in one share is highly risky.  WHich is why any one who understands investing doesn't do it.  Nor do they invest in a single industry.

darren232002 said:

Linton said:

I am afraid the discussion is a bit pointless as you are using technical investment terms when it appears you dont understand what they mean.

Would you like to point out which terms you are referring to and specify your definition of them?

I would like to point out that, in the post you quoted, I did not use the words 'share,' 'market capitalisation,' 'potential value,' or 'book value.' I'm assuming you are referring to the use of the word 'yield.' So, would you like to post your definition please?

Linton said:

Why this is important is that shares mean ownership of an underlying asset, in this case a company.  If you own all the shares you own the company.  Both Yield and particularly P/E relate the price of the share to characteristics of the company - they help keep stock market prices broadly honest as it becomes obvious if the price is far too high or far too low.

The underlying company has 3 values:

A ) Market capitalisation - share price X number of shares
B ) Potential value as an ongoing business.
C ) Book value - what you would get if all the company's assets (property, office equipment, patent rights etc) were sold minus debts.

If A becomes less than C then it is worth someone's while buying all the shares at a premium to the current price so that the company can be asset stripped
If A becomes less than B then it is worth someone's while buying all the shares at a premium to the current price to gain ownership of the whole company.  You may have heard that Morrison's is being taken over for this reason.

For gods sake man, how many times do I have to say it; Bitcoin is not a stock. Please stop trying to analyse it as such.

This is just irrelevant tangential information. I'm not interested in discussing book value with you because Bitcoin isn't a stock.

Linton said:

So there is a solid lower value to a share price, provided of course the company does not go bust.  Crypto currencies dont have this benefit.  A Bitcoin could reasonably be worth 0.01 times or 100 times its current value in the near future.  There is no measure of whether it is undervalued or overvalued.

Wait, wait wait... So there's a 'solid lower value' but it comes with an asterisk attached? So that means... that there is no solid lower value right?

Is this your ultimate point; that Bitcoin is a bad investment because it could potentially go to zero? All that to get to here?

Bitcoin collapsed by 50% a few months ago. Plenty of people showed up to buy it at $30k which is 50% higher than its previous cycle ATH. $30BN+ of Bitcoin is traded every single day. The market isn't exactly small or illiquid and there is a colossal amount of demand. What makes you think that demand is going to disappear?

The possibility of one single share losing all value is small but certainly real.  The chances of 1000 different shares all losing all value is infinitesimal - if they do we are in an end of the world scenario and your investments wont matter anyway.  The value of those shares that dont lose all value is limited by constraints imposed by the external world.  A potential buyer or seller has metrics by which he/she can decide whether a price is good or poor value.  This generally keeps prices at a justifiable level..

With crypto the price is what it is.  There is no way you can use outside world information to base a decision to buy or sell.   So in my view crypto in general and BTC in particular is a bad investment in which to place serious money because:

1) Lack of diversification.
2) You have no way for you or anyone else to assess the price
3) Susceptible to positive feedback.
I understand Bitcon is divisible by 100 million..  The size of the lowest value amount available is presumably limited by the availability of low value currency with which to buy it.  But if this was too high very few people would be able to afford it.   Lets assume that there is a limit when the smallest amount one can buy is $1.  That would put a maximum price of 1 bitcoin to $100M, or all bitcoins to $2.1 X 10^15 .   This is effectively infinite since it exceeds global GDP.  Division means that no matter what the price people will always be able to buy an affordable quantity. . If the price is seen to be going up people will come in at the bottom. The more you divide the higher the price of existing holdings with no realistic top limit.

On the ether hand the valuation has little meaning in that if sufficient holders wanted to cash-in, the price would drop which could lead to a feedback loop falling eventually to zero.

There are no stops in either direction.