BITCOIN

barnstar2077

jcontest said:

Aegis said:

Linton said:

Zola. said:

Cus said:

After the last few minutes months has it shook you Zola our are you still committed?  

What kind of events need to happen for you to cut losses?
Comment: This is not a dig, I'd like to know what a pro bitcoin investor thinks?

Not at all. I am not aiming to trade Bitcoin on a very short term basis, so my time horizon is far out. I am also adding to my stack when the prices are low (as well as continuing to buy index funds etc).

What events would need to happen to cut losses? It would have to be something utterly devastating, like a serious bug in the code, or some other catastrophic self inflected wound.

Everything else is just speculation and noise. 

Are prices for Bitcoin low at the moment?  What analysis tells you that?

Bitcoin has dropped by more than 40%  (in USD) in the past year.  Why could it not drop by 40% in the next year?

This is exactly the question I keep coming back to - how do you determine fair value so that you know whether short term movements are buying opportunities?  The answer usually seems to be "long term trend", which in my view simply doesn't adequately answer the question of where value comes from.

I think we should look at "paying with BTC" in the same way as "Cash Accepted" or "Pay by Phone" or "Pay with Visa".  For people that hold huge amounts of BTC the swings could be against you when you purchase something (cash in your BTC) but you could save a lot too.  Early days I loved the idea of BTC, these days I do not.  It doesn't scale well at all and I think that will eventually mean the end for it.  Plus a lot of people think it's "hiding" your money and transactions (Much like they think of a VPN for networks) but when they soon realise that there is a public ledger that can track their money forever then the luster on that idea will dull.

I don't think it is like pay by phone or Visa.  If I have a thousand pounds in my bank account I know it will be worth pretty much the same amount in a few weeks time when I come to spend it on something with my Visa card.  Also, I can trace where my money goes and where it came from.  It is also covered if the bank collapses (to a point.)  The bank will also investigate if I say that something untoward has happened.  We don't need extra currencies.

HCIMbtw

Aegis said:

fwor said:

What you are saying has been said here before, earlier in the thread (probably several times over) and neither the analogy with Ponzi nor with pyramid type schemes holds up to closer examination.

I have yet to see any actual analysis that leads me to think it's anything other than a Ponzi scheme.  236 pages or not.

Can ponzi's be decentralised? 

I totally understand ponzi rhetoric with regard to s**t coins, but it feels totally misplaced with regards to BTC

Calling it zero sum I wouldn't argue with

Malthusian

Zola. said:

Oxford will have the option to keep whatever Bitcoin they want from sales, or just take fiat cash... 

They aren't taking any Bitcoin. The raison d'etre of their sponsors is converting Bitcoin to fiat so actual businesses like Oxford City FC will accept it.
All Oxford City's bills are in GBP so there would be no reason to hodl Bitcoin unless the owners had gone full crypto bro and decided that "Bitcoin to $400,000" is their ticket to the Premier League.

On the subject of football, here is a non-league team who are a heavily focused Bitcoin club, who also openly share their financial reports. 

Not exactly surprising. Football and gambling have always been joined at the hip.

Aegis said:

I have yet to see any actual analysis that leads me to think it's anything other than a Ponzi scheme.  236 pages or not.

All Ponzis are zero sum games but not all zero sum games are Ponzis.
A Ponzi scheme involves the administrator of the scheme making payments to players out of the pot, typically on a regular basis, in cargo cult imitation of an investment. When the pot inevitably runs out and people stop putting money in, the game ends. 
A pyramid scheme involves players paying money to the person who signed them up (and, usually, the person who signed them up, and so on), in exchange for the right to be paid by those they recruit and that they recruit in turn. 
If Bitcoin is a scam (I make no judgment if it is or it isn't, because there is no such thing as a scam; it is a semantically useless word that people apply to everything from fraudulent schemes to sharp practice to overcharging to not winning a raffle), it would be a "pump and dump".

Zola.

Malthusian said:

Zola. said:

Oxford will have the option to keep whatever Bitcoin they want from sales, or just take fiat cash... 

They aren't taking any Bitcoin. The raison d'etre of their sponsors is converting Bitcoin to fiat so actual businesses like Oxford City FC will accept it.
All Oxford City's bills are in GBP so there would be no reason to hodl Bitcoin unless the owners had gone full crypto bro and decided that "Bitcoin to $400,000" is their ticket to the Premier League.

With respect - you don't know that, unless you know the Oxford owner and they can confirm? Coin corner are a bitcoin exchange, where you can buy or sell bitcoin. Yes they can instant sell upon transaction, but they can also keep whatever they want, even if its a small percentage of a sale. 

It's also interesting that a chartered financial planner appears to have to be educated on what a ponzi scheme is.. 

"Ponzi scheme" is just another lazy term thats thrown around really without much thought about what it actually is.  

Frequentlyhere

It seems to have been a while since anything really of note happened with Bitcoin specifically. I had a look at the top posts in r/Bitcoin over the last month and it just seems to be the usual banter.

So, to the enthusiasts, genuinely, what is next? 

The fiat value of the thing isn't really doing much (though one could argue that's a good thing (less volatility) perhaps).

So, putting the price aside, where do we go from here? Are there interesting tech changes afoot, is mass adoption progressing, what's really happening?

From the outside, it just seems like the whole thing is drifting along at the moment to me without much direction, good or bad.

edit: As an aside, the paid puff "news" pieces from the likes of time magazine and forbes I found whilst trying to answer this question are just so rubbish. " Analysts say BTC could hit $300k or $5k by December. Why? Because they reckon so!" is the gist.

Aegis

HCIMbtw said:

Aegis said:

fwor said:

What you are saying has been said here before, earlier in the thread (probably several times over) and neither the analogy with Ponzi nor with pyramid type schemes holds up to closer examination.

I have yet to see any actual analysis that leads me to think it's anything other than a Ponzi scheme.  236 pages or not.

Can ponzi's be decentralised? 

I don't see why not.  If the sole source of returns is that more people are expected to pile money in, then the profits that people take can only come from new investors. 

Adyinvestment

Bitcoin's fundamentals are going very strong, it is just that during a bear market all the positive news stories don't have the same attention.

Stories like the below, with Blackrock partnering with Coinbase to allow institutional investors to invest, I think is extremely good news for Bitcoin's future price, but hardly gets a mention outside Bitcoin enthusiast circles at the moment.

Coinbase partners with BlackRock to create new access points for institutional crypto investing (cointelegraph.com)

Zola.

It's spluttering along in terms of fiat price, but holding up pretty well given the pretty horrendous macro economic outlook.

Behind the scenes, developers are fighting over a plethora of innovative proposals. This (ugly) website details many of these BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Projects). Which are voted on, argued over and the best ones developed, slowly. There is always work being done on Bitcoin. BIPs are where key innovations like the Lightning Network were born, and where all the best innovations will come from in the future.

You can see lists of all the work also here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips
Open and transparent. 

The ignorant claims of "BitCoiN CaN't ScALe" is utterly ludicrous.

Many people don't appear to realise or understand what open source software is or means. Many of the worlds best innovations are open source, such as Android OS, which makes up about 75% of the market share of phones globally....

HCIMbtw

Frequentlyhere said:

It seems to have been a while since anything really of note happened with Bitcoin specifically. I had a look at the top posts in r/Bitcoin over the last month and it just seems to be the usual banter.

So, to the enthusiasts, genuinely, what is next? 

The fiat value of the thing isn't really doing much (though one could argue that's a good thing (less volatility) perhaps).

So, putting the price aside, where do we go from here? Are there interesting tech changes afoot, is mass adoption progressing, what's really happening?

From the outside, it just seems like the whole thing is drifting along at the moment to me without much direction, good or bad.

edit: As an aside, the paid puff "news" pieces from the likes of time magazine and forbes I found whilst trying to answer this question are just so rubbish. " Analysts say BTC could hit $300k or $5k by December. Why? Because they reckon so!" is the gist.

Quite a lot going on with regard to regulation, have adoption from companies like fidelity allowing 401k investments in BTC. BTC ETF's have been rejected by regulators recently. Longer term we have the BTC halving in 2024. Still have a narrative around country adoption with places like Tonga, but growing consumer adoption is far more important. 

Think everyone's just taking breath after huge cascading liquidations and all the 3 arrows capital, luna, celsius drama though to be honest. Took a huge amount of leverage out the markets. 

I see a lot of narrative saying the bottom is in, though I am not convinced we won't re-test as I still think main markets are fragile and BTC is not decoupled. 

For me it is all pretty simple though, the long term narrative remains the same and now is a great time to continue DCA'ing.   

Adyinvestment

I went to Avon Valley adventure park today (kids loved it by the way), when booking the tickets last night on the website I noticed at the top of the page large pay with Bitcoin and some other Crypto logo's.

Today at the park, all the food/drink places had "Pay With Bitcoin" in very prominent positions and I kept seeing Bitcoin signs wherever you could buy anything, the tanoid system repeatedly stated the park was cashless and to pay with either card or Bitcoin.

I did ask one of the staff serving if it was used much, he said it was very new and not many customers used it, but also said that a lot of people had asked about it. He did not know how the transaction was processed but I could see a lightning sign on the screen so I assume the lightning network.

That is some serious free advertising for Bitcoin.