What do you think of Bitcoin?

Post Reply New Topic

I am unsure where this goes, as it's a cryptocurrency (or a 'virtual currency'), but since it exists online for the most part, I'll put it here.
-----
What do you all think of Bitcoin? It's an interesting currency; it's hard to believe it's valued at so much right now!

I think it's in a bubble.

It's not a very good medium of exchange considering that it can only handle 7 transactions per second and takes something like ten minutes to finalize each transaction. There are ways to get around this limit by taking transactions off-chain, but they will increase the opportunities for fraud.

Also, currencies need to be stable and bitcoin is unbelievably volatile.

All I can think is "gee I wish I had gotten a bunch of Bitcoin back when it first started."

Bitcoin is pretty much the only good investment these days. Crashes are rare, and it always bounces back again afterwards. Furthermore, it's going to adopt Lightning Networks eventually, speeding up transactions. There are many altcoins based on the Ethereum chain that will be used for ordinary, day-to-day spending (Monaco, TenX, OmiseGo, etc.); Bitcoin will serve as a gold standard when this happens. You cannot eat gold or buy a Tesla with it, so bitcoins are valuable for the same reason as gold (scarcity).

I always thought Bitcoin is crap, and I did not change my mind.
As I just wrote in my facebook:
Trying to extrapolate the recent rise of value of Bitcoin into future trends, it seems to be on a divergent curve about to reach infinity in finite time, which may be as early as the next couple of weeks. But the next value after +infinity is logically -infinity, which in logarithmic scale means zero. So, be careful !
Here is my link of arguments against Bitcoin.
Some news :
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/7/1674 ... ity-breach
https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/6/16742 ... volatility
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mi ... nsumption/
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 91371.html

Last edited by spoirier on 09 Dec 2017, 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What's your definition of crap, then? Cryptocurrency has something called proof-of-work. The US dollar and the euro has no such thing, and the value is at the mercy of the central banks. Money is not "tangible" per se, in the sense that only a small percentage of it is backed by something physical.

I bit coin one time.. hurt like hell and cost me a trip to the dentist.

It's a bubble waiting to happen, like 1929 people are taking insane loans from newbie banks to finance their bitcoin purchases. There is also currently a cue to cash out that is getting longer and for the moment a wise person would stay away from this economical experiment.

The mechanisms behind BTC is not a good recipe for a stable monetary system. There are other eCurrency systems that are coming with better safeguards for the consumer.

I'd go with Etherum or any other major coin that isn't severely overpriced.

Also this tweet:
https://twitter.com/TheRealNikolarn/status/939172302729760769

I don't really understand it so I am not sure.

The last issue of New Scientist had an interesting article about this (unfortunately, currently paywalled, so I can't link - I read the dead-wood version.)

They were writing about the trend towards existing financial institutions buying them up or "mining" them (which you basically need your own server farm to do these days) then packaging them up into the same kind of financial commodities as the "derivatives" that were so instrumental in the last big financial crash. Since they are so much more easily affordable by well-heeled investors, and are beginning to be traded no differently than any other commodity, I see no reason to think that they will revolutionise currency in any way, nor that they will be immune to the same boom-bust cycles as anything else.

There is an excellent book on the subject of bubbles that everyone should read.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay.

And the Bitcoin is at the mercy of speculators. As much as traditional money is at the mercy of central banks (Don't see why it's such a bad thing), it's overall quite stable; we can't say as much for the BItcoin; and as peoples are now interested at the BItcoin not as a transaction tool, but as speculation, it's obvious it became a bubble.

YES!! ! Doesn't he talk about the tulip mania - among many others? I grew up with this on my father's bookshelf and really enjoyed it when I was old enough to comprehend it. A copy now sits on mine.

It's unstable because it's new. Because it's unstable, you can make money of it. People are buying now because they don't want to make the same mistake they did with Google, Facebook and Tesla (waiting for too long).

It will be stable and heavily regulated in a few years, ensuring that only people who are rich to begin with can profit from it. If you buy stocks today, transaction fees and inflation will devour any profit you make; I guess that's where BTC needs to go for Wall Street to take it seriously.

It's controversial because it's making truck drivers, teachers, and nurses rich. Warren Buffet and his peers can no longer sell pipe dreams about the stock market to the people.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, formerly saw its use almost entirely in the black market. Nowadays, there's cities in which one can spend Bitcoin fairly easily, mostly in Germany. In addition, cryptocurrency is popular for black market trade in China and between her neighbors in Asia. Lastly, the United Arab Emirates is the first country to legitimize a cryptocurrency. Personally, I hope we have a future in cryptocurrency. I long for it to stabilize and for people to acknowledge it as currency in itself and not just a quick buck. Oh, but that hope is becoming increasingly forlorn. I suppose one can still dream, right?

I hope i'm never forced to use it.