Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll pay whatever this guy is paying +$1 for the entire chain.
I would pay +$2. Oops, I guess BTC being worth zero is very unlikely.
It can go to 0 if people stop mining. Then you couldn't even make the transaction.
It can all go to zero
181–190 of 361 posts
Re: It can all go to zero
#182Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies, nothing more. Bitcoin's value is dependent not on underlying fundamentals, but rather on supply and demand. Its supply is limited and will be fixed, but its demand is based on on its perceived usefulness, either for storing value or making purchases (maybe other things?). Until we see that it is useful for these things, we should assume its fundamental valu…
you're describing currencies, not fiat currencies. Even gold has limited 'intrinsic' value. Pretty much all of it 'real' applications have acceptable, cheaper substitutes. Anyone buying gold-plated connectors for their audio equipment is basically an idiot (source: in high school I used to work for radio shack)
Gold plated is useful because gold doesn't rust, and still conducts decently.
Re: It can all go to zero
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
People made a version of that argument with mortgages and mortgage backed securities. Mortgages are spread across too many people, too many geographic areas, etc., and there's no way they'll all decline or default at once.
To be fair, mortgages didn't all default at once. Some companies over extended themselves with subprime mortgages and that's how we got the real estate bubble. Crypto is nowhere near that, for one, very little of crypto's value comes from loaned money.
How do you know how much debt is tied to cryptocurrencies?
Re: It can all go to zero
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. AMZN traded at around $100 in 1999, then $12 just a few months later. Now if you believed in Amazon's business model and bought at that low you could have made about 120 times what you invested if you sold today. For me I look at crypto the same way. Crypto's value is going to fluctuate over time, but I think that over the long term (5-10 years) it will become more stable and more valuable. A huge dip is a great…
These currencies, as they like to call themselves, will only become stable when there's a basket of goods you can exchange them for at a consistent price. Right now it's all speculative investing and a little bit of spending as a currency. Once you can buy $10 of goods, consistently, for 0.0001 BTC (or whatever) then the price will be stable and the currency can establish itself. The same is true for the other crypto…
Agree 100%. Cryptocurrency can't be money until it measures stable value.
And that stability is literally impossible without a central bank.
http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money...
Re: It can all go to zero
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ask yourself what exactly is behind that “~550B”. The answer is nothing but faith. You are comparing the market cap of cryptocurrencies to NASDAQ, a portfolio of the highest profit driving, real asset laden companies on earth. How is this even remotely realistic?
Everything is based on faith to a certain extent. None of us (that I'm aware of) have crystal balls that see the exact future. Even companies that have lots of assets behind them could potentially make catastrophic fuck ups that tank their stock (i.e. BP and their Deepwater Horizon spill) in an instant.
BP's spill is not a great example of the evanescence of traditional industry. Despite the "catastrophe" you reference, their market cap is still $130 B and they pay out 5% in dividends...
(In fairness, there's a lot of faith involved in your broker doing the trade in BP, the ADRs if applicable, the DTCC holding your actual shares, etc., but not a lot of faith required to believe that thousands of people are actually drilling useful shit out of the Earth for BP's owners.)
Re: It can all go to zero
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a possibility. Maybe they'll still be here, maybe they'll be totally gone; maybe they'll exist, but only in certain niches, or in a form that's unrecognizably different than what they look like now. By analogy: two decades ago, US consumers were buying almost a billion dollars' worth of photographic film a year [1]. Photography hasn't gone anywhere -- people are taking orders of magnitude more photos than they u…
Ok so we disagree on whether Bitcoin has peaked or not. Do you feel like crypto has peaked? There's this half trilion just waiting to be multiplied. Like people just bought in, they wont be selling. In some sense, I wonder if the fact that beginner investors bought in means that it's more resistant to a price dump as they wont have stop losses. If they bought for 1000, they wont sell for 500 thereby keeping the price…
> Like people just bought in, they wont be selling
Is this a serious argument?
Re: It can all go to zero
#187Time for the monthly cryptocurrency panic thread. While I fully agree that most cryptocurrencies are grossly overvalued, these articles always pretend a 20% selloff is the beginning of the end, when, in crypto land, 20% selloffs are a pretty standard bad day for the market.
Ah yes, "it's different this time". Sure, sure.
The reality is that the nanosecond the zeitgeist changes and people start believing that there is going to be an extended period of decreased value in cryptocurrencies then there will be a massive selloff which will just cascade. This is how markets work, this is how speculative bubbles work. Bitcoin especially has almost no value other than speculative investment, it's just a matter of time until the bubble pops.
Re: It can all go to zero
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
A bug is discovered allowing fraudulent creation of bitcoins, and no easy or timely fix is possible. That or governments outlaw it entirely.
Governments outlawing numbers, that'll be the day.
Governments outlawing of numbers has been going on for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
Re: It can all go to zero
#189Ive some positions in different cryptos. I bought them with the same mindset that I use when I go to a casino. What do I not mind losing? Its just one more investment vehicle that I plan on riding out for the mid to long term. I may win, I may lose but its not the only horse Im betting on.
Yup, this is definitely the right mindset to have. I've been involved in crypto since 2013 and I've found the key to making money is not drinking the kool-aid. Sell when you're happy with the return you've made. Investing in crypto is a little like playing poker.
Re: It can all go to zero
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
People made a version of that argument with mortgages and mortgage backed securities. Mortgages are spread across too many people, too many geographic areas, etc., and there's no way they'll all decline or default at once.
and there's no way they'll all decline or default at once. This is where Credit Default Swaps came in. What is the cryptocurrency equivalent of a Credit Default Swap?
It wouldn't be a CDS, it would just be a swap (like a currency swap). A bitcoin isn't a credit instrument, so there's no possibility of default. (Although it's also true that swaps usually anticipate a currency's local interest rate -- what's that for bitcoins?)
And, you probably wouldn't use a swap for hedging bitcoin currency exchange risk, unless you were doing an actual useful transaction where the sources and uses were in different currencies. People with bitcoins are either speculating or taking duration risk approximately equal to the delivery delay of a Priority Mail envelope full of heroin, as I understand it.