Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still not as stupid as buying fidget spinners in bulk.
Context?
Someone bought fidget spinners with their life savings and was looking to sell them quick:
Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
131–140 of 437 posts
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#132Notice how almost all news of Bitcoin now are about its price. Bitcoin used to be exciting in both technical and economical aspects, but has now become just a store of value entirely driven by speculation. Other technically superior cryptocurrencies (e.g. Monero, Ethereum) have replaced most of its usecases, boasting much faster and cheaper transactions and real anonymity in the case of Monero. Bitcoin takes more tha…
> (e.g. Monero, Ethereum) have replaced most of its usecases I use Bitcoin from time to time to order food and buy other stuff online (sometimes through gift cards bought with Bitcoin). It's tough enough to find sites that accept Bitcoin, but I don't think I've ever seen one that accepted Monero or Ethereum. Maybe Litecoin a few years back. I admit that I haven't searched, but I would have expected a correlation with…
I think you're confusing the present state of cryptocurrency as being its conclusion. Yes, Bitcoin was the first mover, and Bitcoin has the most buy-in. But cryptocurrency in general does not have global buy-in as a way to buy and sell stuff.
A) Barriers to initially acquiring crypto coins remain a bit high. B) Expense of transactions remains way too high, C) Transactions are way too slow, and D) For Bitcoin in particular, the hoarders make it politically difficult for Bitcoin to move to an algorithm that can produce faster transactions and therefore serve as a better means of payment.
All the major blockchains in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, right now, are too slow and expensive to be of much use as a currency to the global economy. It stands to reason that if one of them, unburdened with Bitcoin-holder demands for ever-increasing scarcity, solves that problem (Proof of Stake?), then Bitcoin will be supplanted by a cryptocurrency that improves the currency experience. Several are in the process of fixing that, while Bitcoin is not.
No cryptocurrency's competition is Bitcoin. The competition is old school means of payment. If your currency becomes closer than Bitcoin to being as useful as traditional money, your currency will have an advantage over Bitcoin.
Imagine you sell a phone on Craigslist, for crypto. You and the buyer can either deal with a $10 fee and 30 minutes to an hour of sitting in a Starbucks to complete your transaction, or you can give up, swap cash for goods, and walk away. Which one do you choose? Time is expensive, too.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like a pyramid scheme in that so long as people keep buying in on the hope of a profit you'll keep making more and more. As soon as people say "hang on this is a con" and convert to another currency then this factor of the supposed value of Bitcoin could deflate to zero. It's not formalised like a pyramid or MLM scheme but it has some of the same structure.
A pyramid scheme involves some form of active (fraudulent) recruitment to help increase the price of the asset. Bitcoin doesn't have this. From what you described above, every single speculative/overinflated asset would be a pyramid scheme. That's not the case.
Have you bought some BTC, I made a killing on it, it's free money, get some now because after the fork you'll be able to bank at least 20% of your initial sum, ...
The peons in pyramid schemese usually aren't committing fraud, they don't realise that they're in a scheme, they're not lying, they are really convinced that they found the money tree and if only people buy in it will bear fruit forever.
I still think the analogy is useful.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#134I 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…
I probably should've taken the time to mine some back when my friends were doing it and tried convincing me too. Ah well. The thing I keep telling myself is if I'd mined even 1000 bitcoins (which was viable at the time I first learnt about it) I'd have totally sold out at $10.. there is zero chance I would have made it to $1000 :-D
I sold my 200 at 40. Something for nothing, right?
/facepalm
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#135What I don't like about the current cryptocurrency climate is that Bitcoin, garbage ICO-s, and BitConnet-like piramid schemes completely distract people's attention from the serious cryptocurrencies that genuinely try to develop a decentralized trustless and efficient payment network, like DASH.
I am betting against the current trend, and holding mostly DASH (and BAT, POWR, RLC and some similar currencies) with practical potential to be used for more than just a store of value like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has its place and strength, it is the digital gold, but too much bitcoin dominance in the cryptocurrency industry is against innovation and progress.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Having a globally ordered, immutable, common ledger is a really useful thing in banking. Particularly in the inter-bank space where a vast quantity of data is shoveled around and everyone keeps partial, flawed copies. Any given piece of data is, usually, required to be private to a small number of parties but is, usually, all required to be available to some parties i.e. regulators. Doing all that is absurdly costly…
> But it's not the bitcoin blockchain, per se, that's particularly interesting. For example, the trustless piece is largely a pointless waste in the problem I outlined above. We know all the participants and can safely move keys etc around. In the same vein, proof of work is unnecessary, we can identify block creators and easily use external remedies if they play silly buggers (no-one is suggesting we get rid of all our lawyers).
Yep, you could basically accomplish the same thing with Git and some rules for how to model a ledger and consensus. In that sense, there's nothing particularly new about the concept of an immutable distributed history. Now there's simply an implementation that cuts the banks out of the loop and lights a fire under them to offer better service.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#137To me an asset that moves 15% in a day, and which no-one knows what it's truly worth, isn't great as a store of value. I'm not going to speculate about where bitcoin will be trading when it becomes a stable, useful asset, but in order to justify a market cap anywhere near this high it will eventually need to generate actual utility for its users. Can someone explain where that will come from? Cheap currency conversio…
Check out this chart: http://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-nvt-ratio/
"NVT Ratio (Network Value to Transactions Ratio) is similar to the PE Ratio used in equity markets."
The NVT is currently high, but not out of control like it was in 2014. This is the best dataset I've seen for working out if the network is actually being used in a way that matches the valuation, and I think will become invaluable when the CME Bitcoin Futures market opens.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's pretty much what happened 500 years ago when people were selling everything they owned (including houses) to buy tulip bulbs[0]. Maybe it's not that bad yet, but it's looking to get that way. Spoiler alert: It ended really badly, but the people who got out early enough did make a lot of money. Plot twist: I did invest in bitcoins back when they were hovering around 2k and sold them for a small profit (~10%…
Tulips aren't finite in number nor can they be transferred on a decentralised ledger. Anyone can grow tulips and grow fake tulips that may look like tulips but are cheaper quicker to buy / make. You can't fake Bitcoin nor can you grow it indefinitely in your garden. People who make the tulip comparison simply don't understand the revolutionary aspect of the technology. It's like calling the internet tulip mania back…
I was replying to someone who was talking about the social phenomenon of bitcoin trading. I wasn't comparing them literally.
Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#139Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally
#140A few years back I had 10 bitcoins and bought weed on the Silk Road with them. Hmm, imagine I held onto it :)
ya done smoked $70,000 worth of pot son