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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

#31

Post by joefourier »

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 than an hour even at absurd transaction fees of multiple dollars, and is actually pseudonymous, meaning if you can associate an address with a real person, it becomes relatively easy to trace all their transactions unless they were careful to cover their tracks.

It may or may not continue to increase in value long-term, but it has little uses outside of being worth a lot of money.

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

#32

Post by romanovcode »

0bsidian wrote: post #29
weddpros wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no pyramid scheme. It's a hyped asset, to say the least, but there's no pyramid. Like a hyped startup, it doesn't do much yet, but it is promising, so people buy it. It may be "worth" much or zero in the end, it all depends on the final outcomes. It's also the easiest/cheapest/most open asset to trade (depending on where you trade). In the long term, Bitcoin can be seen as a safe heaven in case of economic ch…

I think most of the people putting larger checks into Bitcoin are betting that it will become a store of value asset. Going from memory, a recent Bloomberg article called Bitcoin: "Gold for millennials". Or, similarly, Peter Thiel said recently [1]: "it's like a reserve form of money, it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments." [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/bitcoi…

All people who are owning Bitcoin are betting.

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

#33

Post by jdhn »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #17
jdhn wrote: post #11

I'm willing to bet that this is happening because people are trying to get coins before the fork happens on November 16th.

Double the coins, double the profits! Right?

Of course! More seriously, I'm moving coins to Coinbase very soon as they're going to allow users to sell the new B2X coins the day after the split. I expect to make a 4 figure profit, but I'm not sure whether it'll be low 4 figures or high 4 figures.

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

#35

Post by nickjj »

d__k wrote: 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.

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%). Yep, I wish I invested more and held on, but it's so easy to think this way after the fact.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania.

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

#36

Post by wyager »

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…

You can’t expect to reason about this without some background in economics. Instead of telling you what I think (because to you I’m indistinguishable from all the other people responding with random guesses), I’m going to suggest that you read some introductory texts about economics and finance and you can probably form some reasonable opinions yourself.

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

#37

Post by simias »

jypepin wrote: post #23
ForHackernews wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

I think with some sort of blockchain technologies, it would be harder for central banks to do things like what happened in Argentina, Greece or Zimbabwe.

That's a very broad claim. What "things" are you referring to and how would blockchain technology have prevented them?

Very simply put the Greek financial crisis was mainly due to poor bookkeeping by the Greek institutions (that's being kind), rampant tax evasion and foreign governments (especially within the EU) not wanting to keep footing the bill. I'm not sure how a clever use of SHA-256 would solve these systemic, cultural and diplomatic issues.

Especially since tax evasion would be significantly easier in a bitcoin world where you can launder and hide money extremely easily. No need for a hidden account in some tax heaven, just generate a new RX address and you're good to go, receive all the bribes and "off the record" payments you want.

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

#38

Post by charlesdm »

jypepin wrote: post #23
ForHackernews wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

I think with some sort of blockchain technologies, it would be harder for central banks to do things like what happened in Argentina, Greece or Zimbabwe.

I'm not a libertarian, but I do believe it's good there are ways to hold relatively liquid assets outside of the traditional banking system. Greece is a great example.

Each system has their flaws, but Bitcoin is not worthless. The question is more, how much is it actually worth? I don't think anyone really knows at this point.

But the more you think about it: easy money policies might help keep the economy afloat, but at a significant price. Cash is losing value fast (perhaps not due to traditional inflation, but because assets just increase so much in value). I don't really believe this is going away anytime soon -- there is just too much money in the world looking for yield, and rates will be kept low.

Let's say you were a wealthy person with $5m in 2008. If you had the guts to put that into an S&P fund and borrow another $10m through portfolio margin (= $15m), you'd be worth around $50m today (excluding taxes, interest expenses, etc etc).

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

#39

Post by agumonkey »

simias wrote: post #18
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…

Cryptocurrencies have a niche use, mainly to buy things on the black market but also for small peer-to-peer international payments when other options are not practical. For this reason I don't expect that cryptocurrencies will completely disappear any time soon. However the value of bitcoin is mainly driven by speculation at this point, a currency that's so volatile is very difficult to use if you're a business. At b…

Big banks are already looking seriously into cryptocurrencies. Like seriously.

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

#40

Post by eterm »

dandare wrote: post #3

I keep seeing my non-it friends boasting on FB how much they profited with Bitcoin this week. I am afraid this bubble will get way much bigger before it bursts.

I'm afraid that like the housing bubble, it'll get "too big to burst" and require intervention to keep those who have previously invested afloat while keeping down those outside the bubble.
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