Bitcoin - Part 2

[psionl0]

Wait, are you saying Bitcoin is a currency now?

Puh-leaze! Everybody says "currency" or "not currency" depending on what POV they are pushing. Many (even you) will use the terms interchangeably.

Bitcoin may not be very good as a "currency" but looking up a dictionary then saying "gotcha!" is pointless.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Governments can ban exchanges. If that happens it could make it very difficult. One news channel cites this as the reason for the decline.

They could also outlaw retailers accepting bitcoin as payment. The anonymous part ends when goods are handed over. A sting operation could catch anyone who thinks they can avoid the laws.

Why is the US government allowing bitcoin to operate so far without interference?

A few years back there was a big legal thing where people claimed to be a citizen of some entity that was not part of the US. This caused a lot of initial headaches in the legal system until the government set out how such matters should be dealt with. End of that attempt.

I do not like the ability of governments to print money without restraint - but I do not see digital currency taking over.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Just as a lay person looking at some 6 month charts.

The general trajectory changed after a brief stall in early-mid November, coming out with a great deal more upward velocity. A rev-up opened December and was followed by a two-stage surge that "bullish" fails to describe adequately. Maybe more like "insane and clearly unsustainable."

Roughly tracing out the old trend line lands somewhere around 11,000, maybe add 10% and call that a psychological floor. But there also seems to be support for holding the trend line that was seen from mid November to mid December, somewhere in the 13,500-14,500 range? The bounces do seem to be generating in a way that supports another floor there.

 

[psionl0]

Governments can ban exchanges. If that happens it could make it very difficult. One news channel cites this as the reason for the decline.

They could also outlaw retailers accepting bitcoin as payment. The anonymous part ends when goods are handed over. A sting operation could catch anyone who thinks they can avoid the laws.

What a good idea! The government should also take the same approach to illicit drugs. The world would be free of drugs in no time.

 

[Craig B]

Your feeble attempt to turn this around on me won't work. I am not the one making a specific prediction. You are. The onus is on you to prove your claims. So far you haven't been able to come up with a single argument that wasn't thoroughly discredited way back in 2011 and every year since.

The reason I say "high degree of probability" is because I dispassionately look at the history of bitcoin and see that it has defied every negative prediction ever made. There no reason to believe that history is going to change for a few years yet (at least). OTOH, there is every reason to believe that you will join the (very long) list of jabbering monkeys who's names are no longer even remembered.

You are making a specific prediction. There won't, it is highly probable, be a crash in price more significant than previous ones "for a few years yet (at least)". Good. That is sufficiently definite to constitute a prediction. Very well.

Now, you are also trying to chase me away from this consideration by animalistic insults about jackasses and jabbering monkeys. That's fine. I've decided not to be affronted by such words, as they will fall on your own head if the events belie your prediction.

BTC is currently at $13,740 and fluctuating very violently; price range today from $13,145 to $15,468, more than $2,300. In spite of this instability I admit to being somewhat surprised at its relatively elevated price following the peak just short of $20,000. Anyway you think it'll soon be so high that I'll blush to recall discussing these low levels. That's a prediction made by you too, and we'll see how it performs in practice. Good luck!

 

[psionl0]

This picture on twitter explains it better than I can.
https://twitter.com/maxkeiser/status/908169891466936320

 

[Craig B]

This picture on twitter explains it better than I can.
https://twitter.com/maxkeiser/status/908169891466936320

I'm surprised you accept that as an "explanation". It looks like simple fantasy to me. Nobody knows when Bitcoin will crash, or how high it will go. It may well already be past its bubble peak, but possibly not.

What is it that you think this twitter chart explains? An eternal inflation of the boom in Bitcoin?

 

[psionl0]

I'm surprised you accept that as an "explanation". It looks like simple fantasy to me.

Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. And in every price cycle the comments are the same: "Oh noes! This time it is the end of bitcoin for sure!"

A child could have understood this.

 

[Samson]

I notice bitcoin trades 7 days.
From a current price of 13943 there will be test of 11000 before the year is out. That is a specific prediction which I will quote on the 1st.
According to an algorithm.
Thank you for paying attention.

 

[bytewizard]

psionl0, when Bitcoin tops $100,000, the drinks are on me (travel from Redcliffe is on you).

 

[angrysoba]

Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. And in every price cycle the comments are the same: "Oh noes! This time it is the end of bitcoin for sure!"

A child could have understood this.

Sure, but now you can tell us as though we were children where Bitcoin gets its value from.

 

[Craig B]

Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. Bitcoin price goes up - bitcoin price goes down. And in every price cycle the comments are the same: "Oh noes! This time it is the end of bitcoin for sure!"

A child could have understood this.

The child then asks ... Are you telling us there is to be no end to the Bitcoin bubble? The child asks a supplementary question ... if it is a long term investment rather than a speculative bubble, what is the source of the income which must be there to justify holding it in the long term? Is the answer that the holder can always find a "bigger fool" willing to buy it at a higher price? Then it's a bubble.

Angrysoba has asked this too, I see.

 

[BStrong]

I don't have a crystal ball and neither do you.

What I can say with a high degree of probability is that at some point in the not too far distant future, bitcoin prices will be such that whenever you remember the posts you are making now you will blush with embarrassment.

The guy that purchased this car from the man who restored it said pretty much the same thing when he bought in:

https://www.mecum.com/lots/DN0615-215794/1969-pontiac-trans-am-ram-air-iv/

When he sold it at the Mecum auction, he was so embarrassed by the loss he took he told Rob it didn't sell - kind of hard to admit that you had to sell something for considerably less than 50% of what you paid for it. When I showed Rob that it had sold and how low the price was he was pissed he didn't follow the auction, he would have been happy to buy it back.

I predict that there will be winners and losers in bitcoin, and like collectible anything it will be the folks that bought it before anybody knew what it was that will win and just about any later buyer are in a real crap shoot.

 

[psionl0]

psionl0, when Bitcoin tops $100,000, the drinks are on me (travel from Redcliffe is on you).

Interesting that you said, "when"

I presume you realize that depending on which year you made a post like that, the amount would have been $10,000 or $1,000 or $100.

Who knows? Maybe if you held off making this post you could be mentioning $1,000,000 in the future. I'm not game to make a prediction like that but every time I have been conservative about bitcoin, its gains have exceeded my wildest expectations.

 

[psionl0]

The child then asks ... Are you telling us there is to be no end to the Bitcoin bubble? The child asks a supplementary question ... if it is a long term investment rather than a speculative bubble, what is the source of the income which must be there to justify holding it in the long term? Is the answer that the holder can always find a "bigger fool" willing to buy it at a higher price? Then it's a bubble.

Angrysoba has asked this too, I see.

Your problem is that you can see only one possibility - DEATH!

There are lots of possibilities:

• The price cycles and underlying trend continue indefinitely.
• The price cycles continues indefinitely but the trend is no longer upwards (it may even be downwards)
• The price cycles become less extreme as more seasoned investors gain a greater share of the bitcoin market.
• Concerted campaigns such as yours convince a large number of speculators to turn away from bitcoin.
• A new cryptocurrency captures the public imagination in a way that bitcoin never could and investment/speculation is diverted away from bitcoin.
• Somebody finds a way to implement an unstoppable DDOS attack or breaks through the bitcoin algorithm (in spite of its SHA256 encryption) thus rendering bitcoin instantly worthless.
• etc

 

[Craig B]

Your problem is that you can see only one possibility - DEATH!

There are lots of possibilities

• The price cycles become less extreme as more seasoned investors gain a greater share of the bitcoin market.
• Concerted campaigns such as yours convince a large number of speculators to turn away from bitcoin.

Why don't you predict a possibility, in that case, if there are so many? But let's look at the two above.

Imagine "seasoned" investors, unlike the flighty flibbertigibbets that are holding Bitcoin just now. What will they do? Will they stop buying and selling so frequently and settle in for the long haul? In that case what income will they be receiving that would make them want to hold the asset? Interest? Dividends? Rent? None of these emoluments is entering the system. The only thing coming in is higher prices offered by greater fools. It's a bubble, and when the supply of fools, or the fools' supply of cash, is used up, there will be a crash. When will that be? I don't know. Nobody can know.

Ah, it's the fault of unbelievers talking down Bitcoin. I told you we'd get that excuse. I even think we'll hear it's being talked down for nefarious reasons by the Judaeo-Plutocratic elite scam fiat money conspiracy so that honest freedom lovin' 'Mericans will be cut off from the river of gold which is Bitcoin, and forced to use the counterfeit fiat Fed dollar to the eternal profit of the Rothschilds.

 

[psionl0]

Why don't you predict a possibility, in that case, if there are so many?

Because I don't have a crystal ball. Unlike you, I am not emotionally invested in a particular outcome and prefer to make any predictions based on solid evidence - not nonsense arguments that were proven wrong years ago.

 

[Craig B]

Because I don't have a crystal ball. Unlike you, I am not emotionally invested in a particular outcome and prefer to make any predictions based on solid evidence - not nonsense arguments that were proven wrong years ago.

Past recoveries - as is clear from the record of bubbles - don't prove wrong the prediction of future collapse. Bubbles form when the only, or overwhelmingly greatest, source of income in an object of investment is capital gain on sales. No regular income. That condition is met by Bitcoin. That is my argument.

I have explicitly rejected the "past rises imply eternal rises" sales pitch, which I leave to Coinmama and her colleagues. And I have likewise explicitly rejected the notion that the timing of bursting bubbles can be accurately predicted, so I claim no crystal ball either.

Anyway your cracked crystal ball says more than mine. It says there will be no crash for years. And in that golden future prices will be so high that I will blush to remember the low price I thought might well be the peak - under $20,000.

We'll see, because if you're wrong about that, it will be eminently obvious that you are mistaken. And I think you are indeed wrong about that.

ETA. My views on this are pretty much the same as what I have just read in this old cutting from FT.

 

[Tippit]

I don't have a crystal ball and neither do you.

What I can say with a high degree of probability is that at some point in the not too far distant future, bitcoin prices will be such that whenever you remember the posts you are making now you will blush with embarrassment.

Lol. You are very naive, aren't you? There are lots of people incapable of shame or embarrassment. He will simply disappear like the rest. What was that one moderator's name? Remember jhunter, and when bitcoin was $100? That was about $180 million dollars ago for my friend.

 

[Craig B]

Lol. You are very naive, aren't you? There are lots of people incapable of shame or embarrassment. He will simply disappear like the rest. What was that one moderator's name? Remember jhunter, and when bitcoin was $100? That was about $180 million dollars ago for my friend.

I hope your friend isn't still holding his hundred and eighty millions when the music stops, if indeed any such person exists, and you haven't merely imagined him as a counterweight to the Judaeo-Plutocrat conspiracy to make people accept fiat dollars at gunpoint.

But if your friend does exist, I hope he has got out or gets out in time. Only a fool goes for top dollar at the risk of losing so much.