I don't know much about bitcoin i'll admit. And I was surpised the other day to read some comments where the poster was saying that the transaction price is somewhere in between 5$ - 20$. Isn't that like... a LOT? I thought the idea of Bitcoins was how easy it would be to make transactions but with a price like that I can image most smaller transactions are discouraged. Also, after the initial hype I haven't really seen much of an implementation of payments in Bitcoins.
So... other than the hype, what's driving the price up if I guess the price is going up way faster than the implementation?
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I'm still completely lost as to whether Bitcoin is basically a pyramid scheme set to crash massively, or something huge that will continue climbing. I probably should've taken the time to mine some back when my friends were doing it and tried convincing me too. Ah well. (Queue heated comments from both sides. Discussing bitcoin is like bringing up religion AND politics at the…
There's no pyramid scheme. It's a hyped asset, to say the least, but there's no pyramid. Like a hyped startup, it doesn't do much yet, but it is promising, so people buy it. It may be "worth" much or zero in the end, it all depends on the final outcomes. It's also the easiest/cheapest/most open asset to trade (depending on where you trade). In the long term, Bitcoin can be seen as a safe heaven in case of economic ch…
You talk about a “final outcome” as if at some point we will all collectively say “great. We are done with Bitcoin and it is from now on and forever what it currently is.” That’s not going to happen. It may hit a period of more stability than it has now, but I highly doubt there will be a final outcome.
(i am somewhat familiar with the tech but don't follow the business side of bitcoin) what I find weird is the forks. A major selling point of bitcoin is that there will ever be only 21 Mio coins. You know, unless there is a hard fork and now there are suddenly twice as many coins. Presumably one of the resulting coins' value will drop but you are still creating value out of thin air, something that the crypto people…
The forked currencies are just the same as altcoins, you can't sell 1 Bitcoin Cash for $7000. The fact that people are willing to accept money for them doesn't change the value of one Bitcoin.
Forgive my total ignorance of bitcoin but - why can't you sell 1 Bitcoin for $7000?
Cryptocurrencies have a niche use, mainly to buy things on the black market but also for small peer-to-peer international payments when other options are not practical. For this reason I don't expect that cryptocurrencies will completely disappear any time soon. However the value of bitcoin is mainly driven by speculation at this point, a currency that's so volatile is very difficult to use if you're a business. At b…
Big banks are already looking seriously into cryptocurrencies. Like seriously.
I think you might be confusing cryptocurrency with blockchain.
Cryptocurrency uses blockchain but blockchain isn't cryptocurrency.
Blockchain technology is already incredibly useful for banks doing interbank currency trading iirc.
I guess you could be talking about banks doing crypto trading, then I would guess that they are but a number are still stuck in the stone ages.
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I'm still completely lost as to whether Bitcoin is basically a pyramid scheme set to crash massively, or something huge that will continue climbing. I probably should've taken the time to mine some back when my friends were doing it and tried convincing me too. Ah well. (Queue heated comments from both sides. Discussing bitcoin is like bringing up religion AND politics at the…
It is very much like a decentralized global pyramid scheme, unfortunately there's no concise resource to explain it all clearly - primarily because there's no VC money pumped into anti-crypto assets that are structured and incentivized like a pyramid scheme, e.g. the most popular blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum's Ether. The issue is the unreasonable amount of wealth transfer that would occur if and as society adopts the crypto-assets more and more, and as bad actors manipulate society to take part - whether through lobbying or bribing politicians or worse; there essentially can be a wealth transfer of 40% plus for people having done nothing except trying to perpetuate this system.
I keep seeing my non-it friends boasting on FB how much they profited with Bitcoin this week. I am afraid this bubble will get way much bigger before it bursts.
When Paris Hilton started shilling ICOs on Instagram, I was reminded of a very pertinent quote apparently (not actually) by Joe Kennedy
> You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips
(i am somewhat familiar with the tech but don't follow the business side of bitcoin) what I find weird is the forks. A major selling point of bitcoin is that there will ever be only 21 Mio coins. You know, unless there is a hard fork and now there are suddenly twice as many coins. Presumably one of the resulting coins' value will drop but you are still creating value out of thin air, something that the crypto people…
> I am sure blockchain tech will be hugely successful in the banking and government sector Are you? Why? So far, no bitcoin/blockchain advocates have been able to explain to me a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database. A single large Postgres instance could handle all the global transaction volume of bitcoin, and it would be faster and orders of magnitude more ener…
The only extra thing blockchain based cryptocurrencies provide is decentalized ordering of transactions. David Chaum tried what you suggest and his currency was shut down by the government quite fast and easily (and people lost their money as their tokens were worth nothing after the incident).
> I am sure blockchain tech will be hugely successful in the banking and government sector Are you? Why? So far, no bitcoin/blockchain advocates have been able to explain to me a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database. A single large Postgres instance could handle all the global transaction volume of bitcoin, and it would be faster and orders of magnitude more ener…
Imagine you don't want a single person to control everything in your country (dictator), and you don't want a single person to control your currency. Against dictators, we have democracy. Against a centrally controlled currency, there's not much but crypto currencies. They're actually democratic, the majority wins. Also, I don't want to be the one who will handle security for the single server with a Postgres databas…
They're actually democratic, the majority wins.
Majority of what? Not the demos, I bet; not so democratic. Majority of bitcoins? Majority of processing power?
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but I'm still completely lost as to whether Bitcoin is basically a pyramid scheme set to crash massively, or something huge that will continue climbing. I probably should've taken the time to mine some back when my friends were doing it and tried convincing me too. Ah well. (Queue heated comments from both sides. Discussing bitcoin is like bringing up religion AND politics at the…
There's no pyramid scheme. It's a hyped asset, to say the least, but there's no pyramid. Like a hyped startup, it doesn't do much yet, but it is promising, so people buy it. It may be "worth" much or zero in the end, it all depends on the final outcomes. It's also the easiest/cheapest/most open asset to trade (depending on where you trade). In the long term, Bitcoin can be seen as a safe heaven in case of economic ch…
> Like a hyped startup, it doesn't do much yet
It does plenty already. I live almost exclusively on Bitcoin. I only get income in Bitcoin, I pay with Bitcoin whenever possible, and I have a Bitcoin-funded debit card for when that's not possible.