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Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

99bitcoins.com

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Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#31

Post by aedron »

Laforet wrote: post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

So annoying to see triumphant declarations of victory of bitcoin, based solely on the price increasing.

Speaking as a bitcoin owner and proponent, there is zero (actually negative) market uptake of bitcoin as a payment platform (which I happen to believe is bitcoin's primary use case). This is because no work has gone into scaling up transaction throughput, which has predictably suffered as a result of increased mainstream interest (even with practically no merchant adoption).

The narrative has shifted recently that bitcoin is now a 'settlement layer', only that makes the situation even worse, because there is no 'payment layer' on top of it, only pie-in-the-sky designs.

So yeah, I don't share in the exhilaration over $4000+ bitcoins.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#32

Post by Laforet »

dwaltrip wrote: post #22
Laforet wrote: post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

> I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it. I don't want to critique any sentences, but this one is heavy on rhetoric and low on information.

All right, I will be a bit specific for your benefit:

- There is a lot of wash trading going on with several exchanges, some of which has had serious accounting issues since 2016. When they fail, the fallout will be far more spectacular than that of the late MtGOX because many traders are heavily leveraged.

- Upcoming Segwit2x hard fork potentially splitting the network.

- Uncertainty with China where the majority of hash power resides. The current crackdown on exchanges is pretty well reported. What I am concerned about is what will happen to the network when electricity price goes up in winter as hydro generation winds down, making mining more expensive. Historically miners were able to get favourable deals with remote thermal plants to cover the shortfall, which may be more difficult due to negative press and an ongoing effort to curb smog.

The view I share with a few perssimistic pundits is that there will be one final rally to $5000 before November for people to cash out before the freefall. What we don't agree on is the timeframe and where the price will hit the bottom. Hence my reluctance to make predictions.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#33

Post by matt-attack »

scarlac wrote: post #7
pvdebbe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what it means for a website to send a notification. Does it mean a flashing tab in firefox?

Depends on your OS. For Chrome on macOS, it'll show a chrome-styled square box with an icon and a piece of text in the upper right hand corner, kinda like macOS notifications (but they look nothing like it). In general, web notifications (can) work the same way they do on your smart phone. They can arrive from an active tab as well as from a background service. Safari (on macOS) will use the native macOS notification…

But in either case the browser has to be running I’m assuming? Seems kinda flawed.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#34

Post by Tepix »

harwoodleon wrote: post #14

A balanced view is that all the articles hold some substance. But the technology is more at threat through its own community than any external force. One question that I don't really understand is how can the total supply of BTC serve its own growth. If the market cap reaches the same value as gold for example - how long before one Satoshi becomes too large a divisible unit to be useful? Can you divide Satoshi?

The market cap of gold is around 122 times today's market cap of BTC.

If BTC were to reach that market cap, one BTC would be worth $363,636 yet one Satoshi would still be worth less than 4/10 of a cent.

It is not an imminent problem.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#35

Post by quickthrower2 »

dmitriid wrote: post #16

In any other world a change of 30-40% per day in any direction would be a cause of concern. Bitcoin enjoys a reality distortion field that keeps it inflated beyond any reason. It's not that different from any other coin on these lists: http://deadcoins.com , https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/

Once it cost an entire Pizza to get 10000btc, I knew we were in a bubble

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#36

Post by Nition »

zdkl wrote: post #21
lokedhs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the greater problem that the total market cap of bitcoin is always going to be 22 million? In other words, the single bitcoin I own will always be worth 1/22M of the entire market cap, regardless of how much it's used. And I only own one. There are lost of people out there who owns thousands of bitcoins. 1000 bitcoins is 1/22k of the entire market cap. How could this be sustainable?

I don't understand how the issue you're describing is specific to bitcoin. Consider that wealth in the real world also accumulates in a non gaussian distribution.

I think the comment is saying that in other currencies, if your currency's total value increases, usually more money is printed to keep the value reasonable. Even with other cryptocurrencies, Ripple for instance has a large unallocated holding of coins that they're meant to siphon out into the market to keep the value per coin under control. Whereas with bitcoin you can hold onto the same amount of money and if more and more people buy in, it becomes more and more valuable.

I'd add that I almost feel like there could be a bit of a paradox there in regards to Bitcoin's actual usefulness for real purchases.

Let’s say Bitcoin takes off and various merchants start accepting it.

Since Bitcoin is useful now, more people buy in. But since more people are always buying in and the total pool is limited, the value continues to go up. The more merchants support Bitcoin, the more people adopt Bitcoin, and the more valuable it becomes.

The more the value continues to increase, the better it seems as an investment, and the more people lean towards holding instead of spending. The more useful it becomes, the better it is to not spend it.

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#37

Post by madshiva »

colordrops wrote: post #18
Laforet wrote: post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

Do you understand the Bitcoin security model? It has not been broken. And do you understand what "woo" means? Your hand wavey proclamations about Bitcoin fit the bill.

A good model would not allow wallet attack...

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#38

Post by dwaltrip »

Laforet wrote: post #32
dwaltrip wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it. I don't want to critique any sentences, but this one is heavy on rhetoric and low on information.

All right, I will be a bit specific for your benefit: - There is a lot of wash trading going on with several exchanges, some of which has had serious accounting issues since 2016. When they fail, the fallout will be far more spectacular than that of the late MtGOX because many traders are heavily leveraged. - Upcoming Segwit2x hard fork potentially splitting the network. - Uncertainty with China where the majority of…

Fair enough, those are all good points. Do you have knowledge of wash trading and accounting issues at at any of the major USD exchanges? I know bitfinex was hacked last year (and paid everyone back?), and there have recently been some strange rumors around bitfinex and Tether, but that is all I have heard.

And do you believe this crash/correction will be lethal? Or will Bitcoin "die" and rise again?

Re: Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far

#40

Post by tete »

Laforet wrote: post #12

And what is the point? Does the price prove that bitcoin has not failed? To me, bitcoin died sometime in 2013 when mining became hopelessly centralised, breaking the economic and security models Satoshi had set forth. The bitcoin thereafter has been a soulness Frankenstein animated by a mixture of ego, greed, and hubris. I don't want to make any predictions, but when the crash comes it will be over before you knew it…

While I agree on the centralization part, I don't think that this somehow makes it dead. I mean in the end many comparable systems are even more centralized.

The notion of "to me, bitcoin died" sounds like "that show/band/social network/news site died to me, because...".

Bitcoin seems a bit like many other economic systems, where it doesn't make sense that it survives or survives so long. I don't think predictions about such systems can be made by purely rational means by any feasible means. There is too much emotion and seeming "randomness" involved.

However, I am sure that at one day be that in two weeks, decades or more it will be over and everyone will have seen it coming, as the most obvious thing. So I agree. Bitcoin will end. However, life on earth will too and even there you have speculations reaching from only decades to billions of years. ;)

I think you are right, however. But I also thought Bitcoin would have been over years ago.

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