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Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

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Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#261

Post by decentralised »

danbruc wrote: post #110

Is any reasonable good and current analysis available showing what Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are actually used for and in what volume?

The volumes you can check using any of the block explorers freely available as for what they are used for, it's a transactional system so all records are transactions.

The myth that cryptos are used for illegal and criminal activity is dying down in Europe with Europol and BoE both releasing studies showing criminals prefer to use fiat rather than cryptocurrencies.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#262

Post by jungans »

g09980 wrote: post #64
0bsidian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, I was just trying to say that currently, one of the most popular investment theses for Bitcoin is "Gold for millennials", not "anonymous paypal" or "decentralised stripe".

A post [1] shared a couple of days ago made a thesis that BTC price needs to grow for it to become a viable "store of value." Maybe this is what we are seeing. "Market cap size is critical for adoption of a store of value. It needs to be large enough to “fit” even very large amounts of fiat, ideally without affecting the market. Gold market cap is estimated at 7 trillion USD, which means that even the richest people…

FYI Bitcoin marketcap as of today is 120B USD but your point still holds.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#263

Post by tqi »

Is this good or bad for BTC as a currency? On one hand, I can see how being more valuable makes it more likely to be supported by retailers / banks / etc, but on the other hand I can't imagine spending BTC on anything when prices keep skyrocketing... at which point I feel like it ceases to be a currency (BTC in particular, not crypto in general).

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#264

Post by ryanmarsh »

jesusthatsgreat wrote: post #94
nickjj wrote: post #35

Earlier 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…

People who make the tulip comparison simply don't understand the revolutionary aspect of the technology.

People who make the tulip comparison simply don't understand the Tulip craze.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#265

Post by aakilfernandes »

loki0505 wrote: post #246

I believe once you can start using your cryptocurrency as collateral for a loan, this space is going to go into the trillion(s). check out Salt Lending. I know many waiting for it to open so they can get a 100k loan and put it back into crypto. This project has been fully licensed and regulated, and owned by the founder of shapeshift (erik vorhees)

Any idea on the tax implications of this? Do you have to pay cap gains when using crypto as collateral?

If not, seems like it'd be massively useful for whales to cash out without paying taxes.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#266

Post by njarboe »

mrb wrote: post #180
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #106

Earlier 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.

" It's like a pyramid scheme in that so long as people keep buying in on the hope of a profit " You just described any investment. FX market, stock market, housing, etc. It doesn't make them "pyramid schemes".

Investment used to mean putting up capital to create or own something that, with some work, would return a stream of income. Farmland produces food with the work of farming. A factory produces goods with lots of people working. A mine produces iron or copper with lots of machines and effort. With the financialization of the economy, lots of people are increasing their "wealth" by speculation and skimming a percentage on transactions. When people start believing that speculation is the only form of investing, society is in for a hard fall at some point.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#268

Post by wolco »

mo87 wrote: post #86
Andrenid wrote: post #2

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…

Back in 2002-2005, I knew a whole lot of "tech-savvy" people with top-notch pedigree, who never believed FB/Youtube/Twitter etc would scale as no one had ever built a "many-to-many", pseudo real-time network at that kind of scale before (both technically/financially). Let alone a bunch of 20 year olds. I was quite convinced by their arguments. Where I was wrong was believing technical arguments mattered. What matters…

The worst group to validate new ideas against are developers.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#269

Post by dumbfounder »

onion2k wrote: post #219
tudorconstantin wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's value is given by the trust people put in it. Just like with the fiat currencies as a matter of fact, because I don't know of any of them to be backed by anything else than trust. Of course, the US dollar has the whole US economy and the biggest army in the world as its plus, but it also has its minuses: the US treasury can and does print as many as it wants, in the detriment of ALL USD holders. Bitcoin's p…

Bitcoin's value is given by the trust people put in it. Currency speculators don't give a damn about trust. They're not in it for the long term value that derives from the usefulness of Bitcoin, and that's the only thing you need trust for. They'll cash out when the price gets to a point where they're happy with their return. At that point either new speculators will get on board and keep the price high or the price…

They increase the volatility which decreases its value as a currency. If prices are volatile it makes it hard to price items tied to Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $7,000 to Extend Record Rally

#270

Post by rhino369 »

tinco wrote: post #108
davidmanescu wrote: post #88

To 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…

Gold, art and wine all have a utility value that's way below their "store of value" value. Bitcoin is just a more convenient store with an equally insignificant utility value. Whether Bitcoin can persist while offering so little value I don't know, just saying these valuations are not unheard of in the asset world. Just look at what people pay for mediocre Van Gogh paintings I wouldn't hang in my toilet..

It's hard to objectively value things. But bitcoin is a clear outlier because it's only value is that people think it's going to go up in value. It's more like beanie babies than a Van Gogh.

Wine price is generally determined by the genuine demand for the wine. Art less so, but still people actually want to hang the art somewhere. Some people speculate with art, but it's not a huge percentage of the value.

Gold is the closest, but it's still a mile apart. First, there is genuine demand for gold for decorative purposes. But there is a large demand for gold as a store of value.

There are two key difference between bitcoin and gold. Gold has a very long track history of reliable demand. All of history it has been valuable. It is seen as a safe bet. But the bigger difference is that gold isn't purchased on the expectations of massive growth. Gold isn't supposed to MOOOOOON. It's just supposed to be steady. Sometimes gold is over priced, but demand is steadish.

Bitcoin only has any value (beyond the negligible trading value) because a bunch of baghodlers think bitcoin will be work tens of thousands of dollars eventually. Why do they think that? Because it's gone up a lot in the past? There is no "there there." If people start to wonder if bitcoin will ever go up, it will crash.

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