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Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

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Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin's value prop is a store of wealth and it's an entryway (through exchanges) to far more interesting coins. Crypto is also a stock market 2.0, where bitcoin is an index fund.

Noooooooooo. Bitcoin is not the stock market. It's more like a commodity

Being able to exchange btc for other coins makes it like a stock market. BTC is also a commodity. It is also a speculative investment into the lightning network. It is also a hedge against fiat currency.

BTC is many things and it causes confusion amongst people trying to determine where the value comes from. It took me many years to figure this out, unfortunately.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#52
post #7

For comparison, he also thinks it's going to $40K by EOY 2018. http://www.businessinsider.com/novogratz-bitcoin-could-be-at...

For further comparison, he ran an $8 billion fund that utterly failed to weather the 2008 financial crisis [1]. Prior to the IPO, he and Fortress' management "borrowed money, used $250 million of it to pay themselves a dividend, and used part of the I.P.O. proceeds to pay back the loan." [1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/04/fortress-group200904...

Can you post your [1] link?

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#53

It could also go back to $100. Bitcoin has no mainstream use right now. It's too expensive to transact in terms of money and time, it's too volatile to be a store of value, it's too technical to be used casually, it's too fragile since it gets hacked every which way, and it's too easily copied to be rare.

> it's too technical to be used casually

In casual use with your mobile phone, you are shown a QR code, scan it, tap "OK", and it's done. Not that technical. Billions of people with smartphones could handle that perfectly. You're right about transactions being slow and expensive, and that is certainly a much bigger problem. That and the fact that there are still very few places accepting it.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin never got hacked, unsecure middlemen did (or pretended to have been)

My entire wallet was stolen [i] -- all that hard work. But that is great news Bitcoin never got hacked -- I got nervous there. /sarcasm http://www.cryptsysettlement.com/ [i]

Yes, this is not a Bitcoin vulnerability. Getting access to your wallet is not the same as cracking it.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Bitcoin supposed to be worth? The only way to determine true value is to go through these phases of price expansion and contraction until equilibrium is reached. If you don't want to participate in volatile speculation, that's fine, the average person shouldn't. But there is no other way around it.

> The only way to determine true value is to go through these phases You're referring to a pump and dump scheme as "phases". You don't set high values by scamming unsuspecting fools.

What scheme are you talking about? It's an unregulated market, so yes, there are scams and dumps occurring. However BTC has huge volume, so it takes huge volume and risk to manipulate it. Or manipulation from the exchange itself. Those are risks that the informed trader is aware of.

Any and all securities go up and down, whether it is justified or not.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always forget to include future innovations in their projections. It's as if they don't believe (or know) that software can rapidly improve. The lightning network looks very promising in its ability to scale and reduce fees. It would make transactions nearly instantaneous, have reasonable fees, and help scale the network.

> People always forget to include future innovations in their projections. It's as if they don't believe (or know) that software can rapidly improve. And you posted that comment while driving your flying car on your way to alpha centauri, right? Foolosh cargo cult beliefs such as the ones you've illustrated do not serve as any basis to make investment decisions.

Everyone thought Netflix was a useless mail-order DVD company until it dominated streaming video.

Everyone thought Amazon would never make a profit until it revealed the profit monster that is AWS.

No one can predict the future, all you can do is take the information you have available today and come to your own conclusion. If you don't understand the implications of cryptocurrency on society and money, then that's your loss. If you think you do understand it and believe otherwise, then go ahead and short everything and go make some profits against it.

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#57

Yeah, this seems like weird erratic behavior. I mean if you are raising a big fund for bitcoin and you think it's going to drop, that's good for yoi because you can buy it cheaper. And if you are not a bitcoin bull, why raise a fund in the first place? Something is up with this guy

Actually not that erratic. he doesn't have enough stake in BTC or ETH to make massive market movements. he's wants to drive the price down to buy more and the only way is through his position of "influence." BTC will make a massive rebound in 2018. I'm sure a lot of BTC bulls have full knowledge of this possibility and are acquiring as many as possible.

Yeah, but then why shut the fund ?

Re: Novogratz Halts Hedge Fund, Says Bitcoin May Drop to $8,000

#60
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help scale "the" network? No, it would help scale "the lightning network" which would not be the same as "the bitcoin network".

Pushing transactions into sidechains helps free the main network from congestion. So while it may not be technically true that the main network's capabilities have changed, users should see massive improvements.

When no one uses bitcoin anymore there will no longer be any congestion. Solid.
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