Economy Bitcoin Doubters, Come Eat Your Crow

[waiguoren]

Boeing stock was at 350$ a share. It was over valued as well. Doesn't mean it isn't a good 20 year investment. I bet even at 16500$ if you held bitcoin for another 20 years, you would do rather well.

Also doesn't mean that you weren't smart to get out at 16500$, wait for a correction, and get back in when it is lower.

I didn't write that it's a bad investment, although I have my doubts. I wrote that it was a bubble, and that's pretty clear right now.

 

[Quipling]

I didn't write that it's a bad investment, although I have my doubts. I wrote that it was a bubble, and that's pretty clear right now.

Thoughts on Bitcoin's long term vs. cryptocurrency generally?

 

[waiguoren]

Thoughts on Bitcoin's long term vs. cryptocurrency generally?

In terms of the price?

My basic framework is: the coin with the best development team + most infrastructure (e.g., exchange support) + best reputation will have the highest price. For now, transaction speed is not as important, but that could change with wider adoption.

I gather that bitcoin's development team is stacked with talent and its devs are mostly in it for the long-term, so perhaps that's promising. I've followed the blocksize limit debate a bit and it seems the bitcoin team has solutions in the pipeline (lightning network).

But there are clearly some tradeoffs between the commercial/transactional viability of a coin and its decentralization. For example, Bcash is trying to distinguish itself by sacrificing decentralization for speed . Its supporters are also muddying the waters by calling their project "Bitcoin cash", taking over the bitcoin.com domain, taking over r/btc, and so on. They've had plenty of success, but until cryptocurrencies are widely adopted for commerce I don't see them having a big advantage.

Let me know if I didn't answer your question or if I was otherwise unclear.

EDIT: one factor I'm not sure about is SHA-256 proof of work as an efficient means of converting electricity to ledger integrity. I suppose future hardware might be much more energy efficient at completing proof of work. I feel there might be an opportunity for an alt coin that is more energy efficient than bitcoin to take over, all else being equal. Definitely not an expert on this, though.

 

[xcvbn]

In terms of the price?

My basic framework is: the coin with the best development team + most infrastructure (e.g., exchange support) + best reputation will have the highest price. For now, transaction speed is not as important, but that could change with wider adoption.

I gather that bitcoin's development team is stacked with talent and its devs are mostly in it for the long-term, so perhaps that's promising. I've followed the blocksize limit debate a bit and it seems the bitcoin team has solutions in the pipeline (lightning network).

But there are clearly some tradeoffs between the commercial/transactional viability of a coin and its decentralization. For example, Bcash is trying to distinguish itself by sacrificing decentralization for speed . Its supporters are also muddying the waters by calling their project "Bitcoin cash", taking over the bitcoin.com domain, taking over r/btc, and so on. They've had plenty of success, but until cryptocurrencies are widely adopted for commerce I don't see them having a big advantage.

Let me know if I didn't answer your question or if I was otherwise unclear.

Bitcoin hardly has a dev team. Consensus is very split in terms of what route to take.

Ethereum is the one gearing up to do big things. They have a dev team an order of magnitude larger than the next biggest with the best and brightest talent in this space.

 

[waiguoren]

Bitcoin hardly has a dev team.

https://bitcoincore.org/en/team/
https://bitcoincore.org/en/team/

Consensus is very split in terms of what route to take.

Consensus among quality devs? My impression is Bcash has no developers to speak of.

Ethereum is the one gearing up to do big things. They have a dev team an order of magnitude larger than the next biggest with the best and brightest talent in this space.

Ethereum aspires to do more than bitcoin does, so I feel the comparison might not be warranted.

 

[xcvbn]

https://bitcoincore.org/en/team/


Consensus among quality devs? My impression is Bcash has no developers to speak of.


Ethereum aspires to do more than bitcoin does, so I feel the comparison might not be warranted.

That is hardly a dev team like I said. The Ethereum ecosystem has some 500 devs and they're constantly adding more.

Consensus among bitcoin users. Every fork turns into a partisan shitfest that threatens to undermine Satoshi Nakamoto's invention.

Don't take my stance as being against bitcoin, because I believe it's crucial to the success of crypto in general. It will be the major worldwide store of value over gold at some point in the future. However, there's nothing else interesting about it in terms of future use cases and that's fine. It has no real direction and honestly, it doesn't need direction. It needs to be left alone.

 

[waiguoren]

It will be the major worldwide store of value over gold at some point in the future.

I'm interested in this point. Why should it serve as an effective store of value? Certainly it has not done so to this point.

My current view is that bitcoin's fundamental value (assuming such a notion is well-defined) is derived from use cases. If bitcoin is totally replaced as a means of value transfer, I don't see why it should be demanded at all over the long run.

 

[xcvbn]

I'm interested in this point. Why should it serve as an effective store of value? Certainly it has not done so to this point.

My current view is that bitcoin's fundamental value (assuming such a notion is well-defined) is derived from use cases. If bitcoin is totally replaced as a means of value transfer, I don't see why it should be demanded at all over the long run.

There's a known finite amount making it deflationary by design(thus a built in incentive to not sell/exchange), it's extremely easy to transfer and move around, and it's extremely secure. It's also virtually tamper-proof, at current prices it would cost billions just to attempt to attack the network.

Bitcoin is a terrible exchange of assets. It's way too slow and way too expensive. The fixes for these issues will meet major resistance and frankly aren't worth the effort at this point. But maybe down the road when everyone is paying $50 or $500 per transaction will there be enough consensus to fork without creating another maintained split.

 

[waiguoren]

To make sure we're on the same page: the following concerns the store of value argument. In general I don't see how a commodity with this kind of volatility can be considered a stable store of value.

There's a known finite amount making it deflationary by design(thus a built in incentive to not sell/exchange), it's extremely easy to transfer and move around, and it's extremely secure.

There are already hundreds of alt coins that meet the criteria you listed, but most aren't valuable and probably never will be. Thus the supply-side arguments aren't very convincing.

Bitcoin is a terrible exchange of assets. It's way too slow and way too expensive. The fixes for these issues will meet major resistance and frankly aren't worth the effort at this point. But maybe down the road when everyone is paying $50 or $500 per transaction will there be enough consensus to fork without creating another maintained split.

This is the demand-side.

I think some of the innovations in the pipeline can remedy the speed and cost issues. Demand for bitcoin as a transactional medium will grow if these innovations come to fruition. In terms of fundamentals, Bitcoin is useful for anonymous, cross-boundary transactions that circumvent the international financial system. Alt coins also offer these benefits, but currently suffer vis a vis bitcoin due to adoption/network effects, e.g., it's easier to write a wallet or create an exchange that supports one or two coins instead of 10.

 

[Quipling]

This crow tastes delicious.

Ill have another serving.

 

[rearnakedchoke]

Ill have another serving.

Does this mean its dropping?

 

[Orgasmo]

Me after checking Bitcoin price today:

 

[JDragon]

Well I have no money in crypto currencies, but isn't it like anyone who bought before 2018 should still be fine?

 

[Orgasmo]

Well I have no money in crypto currencies, but isn't it like anyone who bought before 2018 should still be fine?

The problem is most people bought after mid 2017 to early 2018, when prices soared sky high.

96% of Bitcoins are owned by 5% of accounts, which means those soaring prices were caused by new investors buying the remaining 4% of coins. It was the classic definition of market mania. Unless you got in on the action early, vast majority of people lost money on it. Bitcoin was originally intended as a alternative currency which you can purchase goods (sometimes illegal) anonymously over the internet. The rapid appreciation and widely fluctuating prices rendered that function useless. Most investors bought in hoping someone else will pay a higher price for them when they sell. That's the opposite of what a stable trading medium should be.

 

[glenwo2]

Me after checking Bitcoin price today:

BitCoin just went to shit.

 

[Patrick Carey]

the ICO/Alt coin bubble has burst so far that the point of capitulation is finally here for these guys. The pain will only hurt more and more as more sell offs happen.

I like many others have predicted this altcoin extinction event from miles away. When people joked about making a new coin to make money because "every coin goes up" but then still try and defend their favorite pet coin as a legit investment opportunity... it was clear as day.

I sold most of my alts at the time I saw Richards Sherman shilling Cobinhood. I am still holding litecoin and a negligible amount of ethereum, neo, xrp which I decide I will ride to zero.

Blockchain replacing supply chain management databases? Doubt it

Why would I even deploy a dApp? It would be cheaper for me to run it on an AWS . The only real use case for dapps is illegal gambling. It's a legit use case.

Part of bitcoin's price explosion was because for a time it did hold a monopoly on a particular market. Bitcoin was the only way you could buy altcoins or ico tokens.

Bitcoin is probably going to go down to 2000 or so

 

[MikeMcMann]

I look more at percentage than strict dollars, a return of 25% in a year and I'm laughing. There's no way I would of had the cajones to hold that 10x nevertheless 66x. Any day the Fed could have made an announcement and it would have all come crashing down to near zero.

With all due respect to @waiguoren, the way you buy is the correct way.

If waiguoren goes in to 'trading' circles with his 'I bought near the low and sold near the high' story particularly coupled with an admonishment to any who do not sell because 'obvious bubble' he would be summarily dismissed by professional traders. that does not mean he could not have got lucky like someone betting on the lottery but what it does mean is he has no rhyme or reason to his trading.

If a $16,500 price was a clear bubble to him then I would love to hear his logic why a $15,000 was not.
$12,500 was not? $10,000 was not.

Basically there should one of two methodologies to a trade that is not a buy and hold long term stock and that is 'percent based return' goals. You hit and you sell. Or analysis based trade sales based on multiples of earnings or other measures achieved, hit and sold.

Again I would ask waiguoren what methodology he then used and how that justified him holding through $15,000? And would he feel foolish had it crashed at $14,900 and he did not sell?

And if his answer is simply 'I was just going for a ride and guessed my way in and out and got lucky' then no problem. But I would just caution about telling others who may have been looking to sell just above his price and got caught as if he knew something they obviously did not.

 

[Headkicktoleg]

This thread aged well

 

[THEfightsAREfixed]

this is the time to buy bitcoin

hot tip: factom

 

[Cuzcatlan]

This guy looks defeated. He had earlier predicted that Bitcoin would be 25k by the end of the year.
It almost looks like there mocking him.


Compilation of prior appearances.