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Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

nytimes.com

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Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#81

Post by JetSpiegel »

csallen wrote: post #72
josu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs are illegal almost everywhere in the world and they are one of the largest consumer markets. Something similar happens to US dollars in Venezuela. So I don't know if making bitcoin illegal will really hurt its value in the long run.

Your conclusion doesn't follow your observation. It's one thing to say that the government can't stop something, and quite another to say the government can't hurt it. Who knows how much bigger the drug trade would be without anti-drug laws.

> Who knows how much bigger the drug trade would be without anti-drug laws.

Look at the legitimate drug companies for comparison.

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#82

Post by [deleted] »

aml183 wrote: post #41

I have great respect for Kevin Roose, but this was a disappointing piece. Dogecoin was a meme. It gained popularity and is still worth something. Jackson Palmer might not believe it has value, but clearly, there are people who own Doge that think otherwise. There is definite frothiness in the market. Some token sales are scams, some are overpromising, and some that look promising will probably blow up. Take a look at…

[deleted]

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#83

Post by koonsolo »

danmaz74 wrote: post #78
aml183 wrote: post #41

I have great respect for Kevin Roose, but this was a disappointing piece. Dogecoin was a meme. It gained popularity and is still worth something. Jackson Palmer might not believe it has value, but clearly, there are people who own Doge that think otherwise. There is definite frothiness in the market. Some token sales are scams, some are overpromising, and some that look promising will probably blow up. Take a look at…

> Jackson Palmer might not believe it has value, but clearly, there are people who own Doge that think otherwise If there is one way you really can't detect a bubble, it's relying on "people thinking X has value". Also people buying tulip bulbs for a house worth thought those bulbs had value, as in every other bubble in history.

> it's relying on "people thinking X has value"

Where do dollars or euro's get their value from? Let me give you the wikipedia definition:

"Fiat money is a currency without intrinsic value established as money by government regulation or law."

What do you think happens to fiat money when people stop believing it has value? Look back to 19th century France, were fiat money collapsed.

Bitcoins have no intrinsic value, which is bad. But the good part is that it only has to compete with fiat money, which also doesn't have intrinsic value. And if you ask me, I put more trust and faith into an algorithm distributed over lots of people, versus trust in banks and governments.

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#84

Post by NelsonMinar »

jdormit wrote: post #4

> A group of Bay Area programmers this year used an I.C.O. to raise $35 million for their project, an anonymous web browser called Brave As in Brave, the new browser from Brendan Eich (founder of Mozilla, famously invented JavaScript in 10 days)? Hardly a scam... Either the reporter didn't do their research or twisted the facts to fit their story.

As in Brave, the company whose business model is siphoning ad revenue from publishers.

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#85

Post by justifier »

aml183 wrote: post #41

I have great respect for Kevin Roose, but this was a disappointing piece. Dogecoin was a meme. It gained popularity and is still worth something. Jackson Palmer might not believe it has value, but clearly, there are people who own Doge that think otherwise. There is definite frothiness in the market. Some token sales are scams, some are overpromising, and some that look promising will probably blow up. Take a look at…

But what I want to see is proponents of cryptocurrencies acknowledge that the value requires a specific outcome to a yet unproven problem in mathematics(o)

How many people bullish for andor excited by cryptocurrencies know that?

any answer to that would leave you wondering: what are the implications?

If the majority answer: of course I know it could all be found to be worthless tomorrow

Or even if the majority answers: wait, it could potentially be mathematically proven to be useless?

Both leave me wondering what the motivations are for those who are promoting it

(o) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_resistance

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#86

Post by koonsolo »

EGreg wrote: post #68
craigc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very good question. I didn’t do a good job making an argument for why I think the value of a currency like Bitcoin could be so much higher than an altcoin that did an ICO. In my opinion, Bitcoin has the first mover advantage in this space. It was the first real use of the blockchain, is still the gateway to pretty much every other crypto currency, there is a maximum supply of coins, and is one of the only c…

Question: Bitcoin is a global cryptocurrency. Sure it has a first-mover advantage but so does Google. Today someone searches with google, tomorrow they may switch to Bing. Can't the same be said of Bitcoin and say Litecoin / Dogecoin / whatever? So why is Bitcoin worth more than Litecoin let's say? Both are accepted by Coinbase etc.

Bitcoin has brand positioning. It might not be technically the best, but brand positioning is really important if you are in a market. It occupies a clear position in people's mind.

Does the common man think of "cryptocurrency", or does he think of "bitcoin"? If in that persons head, "bitcoin" is the same as "cryptocurrency", then it will be really hard for a competitor.

Google is a nice example. "I will google it for you". Nobody says "I will bing that", or, sadly for other search engines, "I will search the web". We say "I will google it". In our head, google is the search engine, and the search engine is google. So if bitcoin is in that same ballpark, good luck to the competitors.

But I'm not saying other cryptocurrencies can't bring anything new to the table, such as Ethereum or Monero. But bitcoin definitely has the brand positioning advantage.

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#87

Post by koonsolo »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #63
noddy1 wrote: post #50

I was a longtime ethereum sceptic, however I was guilty of being a cynical old curmudgeon; the type that poo-poo's anything and everything novel on the grounds that I'll be right 95% of time, ignoring the fact that I'll poo-poo everything that will ever change the world. Bitcoin made currency decentralised and permissionless. Ethereum has made capital raising and equity holding decentralised and permissionless. Sure,…

> Bitcoin made currency decentralised and permissionless. This is a common misconception, that cryptocurrencies can somehow exist outside government control, and it makes me doubt some of the long term value of Bitcoin. A government can basically make anything it wants illegal, and once cryptocurrencies become large enough, there will be tons of additional regulations and control.

Like downloading movies and mp3's?

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#88

Post by semi-extrinsic »

justifier wrote: post #85
aml183 wrote: post #41

I have great respect for Kevin Roose, but this was a disappointing piece. Dogecoin was a meme. It gained popularity and is still worth something. Jackson Palmer might not believe it has value, but clearly, there are people who own Doge that think otherwise. There is definite frothiness in the market. Some token sales are scams, some are overpromising, and some that look promising will probably blow up. Take a look at…

But what I want to see is proponents of cryptocurrencies acknowledge that the value requires a specific outcome to a yet unproven problem in mathematics(o) How many people bullish for andor excited by cryptocurrencies know that? any answer to that would leave you wondering: what are the implications? If the majority answer: of course I know it could all be found to be worthless tomorrow Or even if the majority answer…

I think this is a pretty dishonest way of framing it. It's not just bitcoin, our entire system for secure communications across the internet (SSL/TLS etc.) is built on the assumption that P≠NP.

If someone were able to prove P=NP and come up with a practical exploit that made bitcoin valueless, it would also spell instant death for Ebay, Paypal, Amazon and a few hundred other small companies. Not to mention that all internet banking would have to be taken down very quickly.

In summary, it would be such a huge shock to the economies in all industrialised countries that it would make the 2012 financial crisis look like a minor inconvenience. Nobody would be concerned with "ah shit, my BTC is valueless", they'd be concerned with "ah shit, there's a run on the banks to get physical money and I will probably starve."

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#89

Post by dagaci »

Some have posted and argued that these currencies do not have "real" value. I would argue that CrytoCurrencies do actually have inherent value. A few reasons:

1# CrytoCurrencies are free from the existing monopolies of the banking sector, money exchangers and politics. You can argue that those hegemonies should have control, but it is undeniable that there is tremendous value to many in that control weakening and being eliminated.

So you can see a source of inherent value.

#2 CrytoCurrencies are incredibly secure, can be extremely private and become ever more secure overtime because of the effect of mining, every watt burned acts to secure the network in an irreversible way

#3 Mining is the first application, mining secures the network and participants are rewarded. More generalized applications with things like solidity only increases the value of the network.

CrytoCurrencies are very much in an early phase, and not cleanly understood. There's a long way to go.

Re: Is There a Cryptocurrency Bubble? Just Ask Doge

#90

Post by zby »

dagaci wrote: post #89

Some have posted and argued that these currencies do not have "real" value. I would argue that CrytoCurrencies do actually have inherent value. A few reasons: 1# CrytoCurrencies are free from the existing monopolies of the banking sector, money exchangers and politics. You can argue that those hegemonies should have control, but it is undeniable that there is tremendous value to many in that control weakening and bei…

These are features that are useful only after you accept that the coins have some value. If they don't store any value - then there is no use in security, privacy etc.

But the point is that it is the same with all money - people don't want it for itself - but rather because they expect to exchange it for something that they'll want in the future.

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