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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

#371
post #268
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty much. They'll tell you a hundred reasons why any single idea you have could never work, for technical or other reasons. I say this as a developer, and I've been guilty of this before.

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

#372
post #260

Notice 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…

There are DApp currencies which have better scaling solutions in place already vs Ethereum. I think you are heavily discounting the first mover advantage. I think a lot of the price movement is speculation, but a lot of it is new institutional investors investing in bitcoin. Ask most people who are new investors in BTC if they've heard of ETH, I bet it isn't as large of a proportion as you'd think. People are betting…

>>There are DApp currencies which have better scaling solutions in place already vs Ethereum.

Like what?

The only competitors to Ethereum are totally unviable as decentralized systems and sustained solely on hype and misinformation. They are also either not released or have less than 1% of the tx volume of Ethereum.

Ethereum also has a very aggressive and well developed scaling roadmap.

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

#373
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally Monero would replace Bitcoin when buying things. Monero is more like cash than Bitcoin is. Unlike Bitcoin, paying with Monero doesn't immediately give away your balance and transaction history. Monero would also be better suited because it has lower fees that will get even lower as the dynamic block size increases. And because of the dynamic blocksize, you won't have to wait forever to confirm that you sent p…

Monero has potential, but I have found DASH to be the currency that has the biggest potential to replace Bitcoin when buying things. It has high throughput, privateSend, instaSend, decentralized governance, treasury system, they are focusing on UX, and I find some of the 'leaders' very talented (like Ryan Taylor).

DASH, aka Darkcoin, should be avoided - in the first two days the developer printed "1.9 million coins" or 10% of the supply.

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

#374

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 s…

Here is what will happen in the long run: Lightning networks will allow common people to transact and will semi-centralize the blockchain across a couple partners, kinda like banks. Over time and for the people that don't really need to be on chain, these banks will start taking over the transactions between each other and just broadcasting signatures from their bitcoin keys to match deposits vs obligations so that p…

> There is a huge market incentive to get in on a coin early, but if there are infinite crytpocurrencies then they all get devalued.

I don't think that's true that an unlimited number of cryptocurrencies existing will devalue others. It might affect public perception (confusion and skepticism for some, thus those people don't participate at all) and affect the value a bit, but not significantly.

Just like I could collect all my toenail clippings, give it a fancy name (like NailCoin), and try passing it off as currency won't even make a blip in any other currency anywhere, all these coins that fail to get any traction are not going to be able to affect the rest of cryptocurrencies.

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

#375
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

None of the cryptos that exist today can even function as an effective "buying stuff" currency because they are all deflationary, not just in exchange rates and short term speculation but in how they all mine at fixed / declining rates to finite limits. If its going to be worth more tomorrow, you probably don't want to trade it for something today. The use case for bitcoin is the same use case that makes up 95% of th…

>>None of the cryptos that exist today can even function as an effective "buying stuff" currency because they are all deflationary, not just in exchange rates and short term speculation but in how they all mine at fixed / declining rates to finite limits.

This graph is evidence against that theory:

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth.ht...

Note that Bitcoin's tx volume hasn't been able to increase since the blockchain reached its 1 MB limit. Otherwise it would have seen continued growth like Ethereum.

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

#376
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about any specific "anarchists"?

Well, those who express a pathological fear of governments, control, and so on.

It's not only anarchists that fear government control over private life (mass surveillance, the erosion of privacy and contract rights, economic centralization through regulatory barriers to entry and gatekeeping, etc are valid concerns that many have).

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

#377
post #21

I think the behaviour of Bitcoin price (not the technology) reflects some social phenomenon rather than the real economy. And it is precisely why it is interesting.

It is a textbook example of a speculative bubble. Shiller's book Irrational Exuberance is a great exposition on the topic. Almost every criterion he cites is satisfied: dramatic price increases, "new era" stories, mass media coverage, and stories of overnight millionaires. The only thing missing is lowered lending standards. This doesn't mean the price will go down though, it is notoriously difficult to predict when…

Sounds exactly like the stock market and real estate asset classes. The global economy is in a bubble.

It's the fringe markets which suffer the most (btc).

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

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're holding two currencies, one loses about 2.5% of its value a year, the other gains about 1500% (some huge factor) of its value in that same period. Which one do you purchase the coffee with? The one that's losing value as you hold it, or the one that's going gangbusters?

This is known as Gresham's Law: Good money drives out bad money. Smart people will trade away their bad money and hold onto their good money when they can.

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

#379
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that it's risky, you could (should) have told them to just invest a tiny amount, like 1% of their savings. That's what I told some folks, and now their investment is up 10× so their 1% investment turned into 10% and their are really happy about it.

There's a moral side of each investment, too, and this one here is not a positive one.

Whoa, did you just escalate to saying that owning bitcoin is immoral? What is immoral about owning bitcoin?

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a moral side of each investment, too, and this one here is not a positive one.

Whoa, did you just escalate to saying that owning bitcoin is immoral? What is immoral about owning bitcoin?

I strongly believe so. Given its only utility as a low-class investment too and illicit trade payment method, how can it be moral? The substantial environmental toll and funding Chinese enterprises is not a positive thing either. I'd be happy if you prove me wrong.
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