Bitcoin - Part 2

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Craig B said:
That's NOT how it works.
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ftfy.

You can make all the irrelevant analogies you like and call people who might buy bitcoin all the names that you like but that doesn't mean that there is coming a day where the last person has bought a bitcoin.

Craig B said:
If it's impossible to steal Bitcoins that's certainly a plus, but is that true? However if it's impossible to steal them because the concept of "ownership" of them is poorly defined, that's a minus.
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This is an example where lack of technical nous handicaps you.

"Ownership" in the context of bitcoin means that you have the private key to your wallet. Nobody can transfer money from this wallet without the key. It is equivalent to possessing something physical which nobody else has made a claim on.
 
psionl0 said:
I doubt that is the case but even if it were, it would highlight the need for a bit of technical nous. It is the concept of "ownership" and the difficulty of stealing that ownership which renders the non tactile form of cryptocurrency a plus.


You also highlight the need for technical nous. You may be able to sprout a number of technical buzz-words regarding cryptocurrencies but you can't explain them to the ordinary reader and you can't distinguish between the technical features that are important to know and those that are less important.

Add to that your knowledge of how supply and demand work and you get a total of .......
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I can and did explain. It took me a lot of different websites to get to the truth of how it all works because there is so much jargon and useless nonsense. I tried to buy some and it was so much effort (and requests for credit cards details) I gave up.

Do you need a lecture (at the level of a six-year old) on supply and demand - historical, fundamental and current? If so, just ask. :)
 
Craig B said:
You're telling me that the last person has already arrived at the bar. As I've said before, nobody knows that, and it can't be known, even by those lucky people who have psychic insight. It becomes known only in retrospect.

A "greater fool" turns up with his credit card at Coin Mama's Bar. The drinks are on him if nobody turns up after that. We can guess that he's the last if, and only if, there is a crash just after his belated arrival, that would deter even the "greatest fool" on earth from attending the festivity.

That's how it works.
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And when it comes time to pay, the man shouts "Drinks all round", and runs out the nearest exit.
 
ponderingturtle said:
And yet there have been many large thefts associated with bitcoin. And being hard to steal isn't terribly important if it isn't actually useful for something.

I am going to continue to invest in commemorative plates, those things are guaranteed to increase in value after all.
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They are not stealing bitcoin. They are stealing the dollars used to pay for bitcoin. Who wants to steal something that has no value?
 
PartSkeptic said:
They are not stealing bitcoin. They are stealing the dollars used to pay for bitcoin. Who wants to steal something that has no value?
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There was a large theft of bitcoin several times, see MtGOX for example. Money is certainly a better choice to steal but there have been large bitcoin thefts.
 
xjx388 said:
A round of CryptoBeer for everyone! I’ll need everyone’s receive address...

That is always true in financial markets. Winners and losers. I’m sure those people who paid me for my BTC were happy to do so at the time and I was surely happy to sell to them. They may end up losers OR they could end up being smart if another little blip sends it shooting to 25k. I don’t think it’s possible to predict with any certainty what BTC will do in the next 5 years: who predicted the 19k it hit in December?
(snip)
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I want my beer cold please. :D

The bitcoin scam is not like the stock market although the scammers are trying hard to make it seem so to get more suckers.

The financial market is where one buys a share in a company. When that company makes a profit so does the shareholder. If the company grows and so do their earnings then people are prepared to pay a higher price for the share in order to get a higher benefit than other investments they might make.

Typically a stock price should follow the earnings of the company - hence the PE (price to earnings) ratio. The normal used to be 12 but the typical is much higher, indicating that the stock market is overheated and overpriced.

There is no underlying asset or earnings growth in bitcoin. It is a gamble like betting on horses. The winners are happy, the losers sigh, the bookies take their cut. Bitcoin pays the early buyers with money from the late buyers and the exchanges make a ton of money in the process.

When the buyers dry up, the race is over, and can be talked about. It is like musical chairs - and the music is about to stop.

One can bet on anything in any way. The stock market fluctuates with various events and there are many ways of betting a ton of money of what goes and what goes down.
 
Belz... said:
Yes, saying you were wrong is a bit negative. It's also true.
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It depends which prediction you are talking about.
It is tiresome to have cherrypicking.

The last thing I said was sell at 8902 on the futures market and I would say when to take profit.
 
ponderingturtle said:
For utility wouldn't it need to be cheaper and faster to confirm trades?
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Absolutely. As I said, the speculation is killing the utility of crypto. But there is still a need for a secure, widely accepted payment token that crosses borders. Bitcoin, given its name recognition, might be considered the best candidate but there are plenty of other contenders that offer utility beyond a payment token. Etherium, Electroneum, Ripple.... these all use tokens as part of a distributed computing platform (I’m not good at tech stuff but that’s my lay understanding). If those platforms take off, then one of those coins might be the coin to rule them all. I think we are way too early to know that right now.
 
Belz... said:
Cherrypicking my ass. You said down to 500 by the end of January and it didn't happen. Your prediction was wrong, full stop.
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That one was obviously going to be wrong, given that it was for a 97% decline in a few weeks.
Don't take everything too seriously, you'll have a fit of old fashioned apoplexy.
 
xjx388 said:
Absolutely. As I said, the speculation is killing the utility of crypto. But there is still a need for a secure, widely accepted payment token that crosses borders. Bitcoin, given its name recognition, might be considered the best candidate but there are plenty of other contenders that offer utility beyond a payment token. Etherium, Electroneum, Ripple.... these all use tokens as part of a distributed computing platform (I’m not good at tech stuff but that’s my lay understanding). If those platforms take off, then one of those coins might be the coin to rule them all. I think we are way too early to know that right now.
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What does the price of a bitcoin have to do with those factors though, the volatility certainly exacerbates them as problems but it does not cause the high fees or slow confirmation through any mechanism I can see.

The problem is that there is call for that utility but the fundamental tech does not seem like it is well suited to this utility, hence the long confirmation times and high service fees.

Honestly how does bitcoin compare to western union for sending money to someone in another country?
 
Samson said:
That one was obviously going to be wrong, given that it was for a 97% decline in a few weeks.
Don't take everything too seriously, you'll have a fit of old fashioned apoplexy.
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Ah, yes. The good old "oh, it was a joke", also known as the "it was just locker room talk" excuse.

Just own your mistake, Samson.
 
PartSkeptic said:
The bitcoin scam is not like the stock market although the scammers are trying hard to make it seem so to get more suckers.
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Ooh! Now you are going to rehash the ancient conspiracy theories that were flogged on this forum years ago.

No longer is it about individuals freely buying or selling bitcoin at whatever price they can get. It is about the evil reptilian aliens luring sweet innocent earth dwellers (with candy no doubt) into a life of bitcoin induced slavery.

I was wrong before. This thread doesn't belong in the paranormal section. It belongs in the CT section.
 
xjx388 said:
Absolutely. As I said, the speculation is killing the utility of crypto. But there is still a need for a secure, widely accepted payment token that crosses borders. Bitcoin, given its name recognition, might be considered the best candidate but there are plenty of other contenders that offer utility beyond a payment token. Etherium, Electroneum, Ripple.... these all use tokens as part of a distributed computing platform (I’m not good at tech stuff but that’s my lay understanding). If those platforms take off, then one of those coins might be the coin to rule them all. I think we are way too early to know that right now.
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Is there really a need though?

I'm not dodging taxes, and I live in the Netherlands so I don't have to order weed from the SilkRoad. Why do we need an international peer-to-peer token?

I'm no expert, but as I understand it:
Ethereum is mostly used to buy ICO's and other cryptos.
Ripple is not distributed but a product of a company that hopes that can replace SWIFT codes used between banks for easy international transactions.

I'm starting to wonder if there's even a need at all beyond illegal activities. And we've been very capable of financing revolutions and trading drugs with good old fiat currency.

And even the blockchain. I have contracts at home in a folder, a copy in the cloud and a copy at my notary's office. Do I need it to be part of some ever-expanding ledger spread out over thousands of locations?

As the Roubini article mentioned. The blockchain has been around for a decade and all it's been used for creating cryptocurrencies. These could just turn out to be an unbelievably inefficient type of Airmiles.
 
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