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Bitcoin Is Back, But It Never Really Left

29 points by Amorymeltzer 11y ago

askafriend 11y ago
Meh, Bitcoin is boring.
jakejake 11y ago
Aside from a few bitcoin I bought before it exploded, I have had an uncanny ability to buy and sell bitcoin at exactly the wrong times. If you want to make a lot of money with bitcoins, my advice is to look at what I do and then do the exact opposite!
- applecore 11y ago
  That "uncanny" ability is mostly a result of markets being much more sophisticated (in terms of price determination) than you think. It has nothing to do with bitcoins; it's just as true for stocks, bonds, or any other traded commodity. If you're a long-term investor and not a short-term, price-sensitive trader, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
  - jcslzr 11y ago
    if by sophisticated you mean ringed...
cb18 11y ago
It's amusing how there has been a spate of these 'bitcoin is back' articles after this recent little(by bitcoin standards) pump and dump. Because the last time bitcoin was here apparently was the massive pump and dumps in 2013. So the criteria for bitcoin being somewhere is people getting fleeced and losing their shirts all for the promise of 'magic internet money,' no scratch that, 'winning the crypto lottery,' duly noted.
- cb18 11y ago
  And another amusing little wrinkle to this is that this recent btc pump and dump appears to have been driven in large part by an actual admitted ponzi scheme with no pretensions of appearing otherwise. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+mmm https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+mmm https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of-bitcoin-cryptos-next-scandal https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi
  - herendin 11y ago
    Though you love using the extremely incendiary term "pump and dump" in your numerous comments, you obviously don't even understand it. Look up a definition. A pump and dump is type of fraud that cannot, by definition, be "driven" by any true external factor, such as people buying bitcoins to invest in a pyramid scheme, as you've just suggested. Therefore your comment contradicts itself. Though it's not impossible that the MMM ponzi affected the bitcoin price, your comments are mostly lazy mud-slinging and weakly-founded opinions dressed up as facts. That's better suited to reddit
coldtea 11y ago
>Bitcoin Is Back, But It Never Really Left It also never really went anywhere. Remains, and will be for the foreseeable future, a curiosity.
applecore 11y ago
We're somewhere between the Trough of Disillusionment and the Slope of Enlightenment within the industry-standard hype cycle, which is just fine.
- herendin 11y ago
  FWIW, I think that hypecycle graph is almost totally garbage. Nobody knows where Bitcoin and the Blockchain are going. Maybe it's a false dawn, or maybe it's the future. But I think predictions are worth very little. Nobody knows. Predictions are usually just people trying to claim ownership on your brainspace. That's opinion, so take it with a pinch of salt :)
cb18 11y ago
"In fact, last week, as the price of bitcoin topped $500, the usage rate reached an all-time high, after roughly doubling over the past twelve months. “The real usage is catching up to the hype,” Armstrong says." That is a highly questionable claim, and considering the source, all the more questionable. As this article mentions, the metric of bitcoin 'transactions,' is in no way equivalent to what would commonly be understood to be an economic transaction. Anybody who has been even cursorily following bitcoin the past six months, or so, can look at that chart and know exactly what it is showing, especially those spikes this past summer, in the lingo, 'stress tests,' or 'spam attacks.' https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=stress+test&restrict_sr=on https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=stress+test&restri... https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=spam+attack&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=spam+attack&restri... And since carrying out one of these 'stress test'/'spam attacks', simply involves writing a script to shuffle around some bitcoins and then running it on a server, it is pretty obvious that is where the majority of transaction volume is coming from since the block size increase proponents have an ideological incentive to do so.(I'm on neither side of the block size debate btw.) And anybody banking their livelihood on bitcoin has a financial incentive to paint a picture of increasing 'transactions,' and when painting that picture is as simple as flipping a switch on a server, it's pretty obvious that is what is occurring.
Udik 11y ago
"the ultimate aim is to turn bitcoin into something that anyone can use to more easily store, send, and receive money" Please, tell how you do that with a currency whose value fluctuates so wildly. The problem with bitcoin, to put it simply, is that as soon as people start using it, its value soars, making it unusable again. That's why it will never work in its current form.
- balladeer 11y ago
  This is what I have never understood about Bitcoin and its advocates (who I guess are just fanboys or early adopters holding bitcoins). I mean it's just like shares. Also, it's very skewed. Whoever got in first has got a lot of it with your chance of getting it at later stages not equal, actually extremely unlikely. And no sir, no, it's not the same case with "money" as we use it today. Bitcoin is broken in this sense if we talk of it from a traditional mean of currency point of view. It's just a glorified fad for geeks, fans, and early adopters.
  - cb18 11y ago
    Bitcoin and its advocates (who I guess are just [...] early adopters holding bitcoins). Exactly. This is the fatal flaw of bitcoin, the distribution model.
    - winthrowe 11y ago
      What's your alternative distribution model? How do you propose to bootstrap an independent value store unattached to existing national currencies? It seems that bitcoin mirrors that quote about democracy in that way, "the worst form except the others that have been tried."

29 points by Amorymeltzer 11y ago

Meh, Bitcoin is boring.

Aside from a few bitcoin I bought before it exploded, I have had an uncanny ability to buy and sell bitcoin at exactly the wrong times. If you want to make a lot of money with bitcoins, my advice is to look at what I do and then do the exact opposite!

applecore 11y ago
That "uncanny" ability is mostly a result of markets being much more sophisticated (in terms of price determination) than you think. It has nothing to do with bitcoins; it's just as true for stocks, bonds, or any other traded commodity. If you're a long-term investor and not a short-term, price-sensitive trader, you shouldn't worry too much about it.
- jcslzr 11y ago
  if by sophisticated you mean ringed...

cb18 11y ago

It's amusing how there has been a spate of these 'bitcoin is back' articles after this recent little(by bitcoin standards) pump and dump. Because the last time bitcoin was here apparently was the massive pump and dumps in 2013. So the criteria for bitcoin being somewhere is people getting fleeced and losing their shirts all for the promise of 'magic internet money,' no scratch that, 'winning the crypto lottery,' duly noted.

cb18 11y ago
And another amusing little wrinkle to this is that this recent btc pump and dump appears to have been driven in large part by an actual admitted ponzi scheme with no pretensions of appearing otherwise. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+mmm https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bitcoin+mmm https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of-bitcoin-cryptos-next-scandal https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/mmm-global-republic-of... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi
- herendin 11y ago
  Though you love using the extremely incendiary term "pump and dump" in your numerous comments, you obviously don't even understand it. Look up a definition. A pump and dump is type of fraud that cannot, by definition, be "driven" by any true external factor, such as people buying bitcoins to invest in a pyramid scheme, as you've just suggested. Therefore your comment contradicts itself. Though it's not impossible that the MMM ponzi affected the bitcoin price, your comments are mostly lazy mud-slinging and weakly-founded opinions dressed up as facts. That's better suited to reddit

coldtea 11y ago

>Bitcoin Is Back, But It Never Really Left It also never really went anywhere. Remains, and will be for the foreseeable future, a curiosity.

applecore 11y ago

We're somewhere between the Trough of Disillusionment and the Slope of Enlightenment within the industry-standard hype cycle, which is just fine.

herendin 11y ago
FWIW, I think that hypecycle graph is almost totally garbage. Nobody knows where Bitcoin and the Blockchain are going. Maybe it's a false dawn, or maybe it's the future. But I think predictions are worth very little. Nobody knows. Predictions are usually just people trying to claim ownership on your brainspace. That's opinion, so take it with a pinch of salt :)

cb18 11y ago

"In fact, last week, as the price of bitcoin topped $500, the usage rate reached an all-time high, after roughly doubling over the past twelve months. “The real usage is catching up to the hype,” Armstrong says." That is a highly questionable claim, and considering the source, all the more questionable. As this article mentions, the metric of bitcoin 'transactions,' is in no way equivalent to what would commonly be understood to be an economic transaction. Anybody who has been even cursorily following bitcoin the past six months, or so, can look at that chart and know exactly what it is showing, especially those spikes this past summer, in the lingo, 'stress tests,' or 'spam attacks.' https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=stress+test&restrict_sr=on https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=stress+test&restri... https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=spam+attack&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/search?q=spam+attack&restri... And since carrying out one of these 'stress test'/'spam attacks', simply involves writing a script to shuffle around some bitcoins and then running it on a server, it is pretty obvious that is where the majority of transaction volume is coming from since the block size increase proponents have an ideological incentive to do so.(I'm on neither side of the block size debate btw.) And anybody banking their livelihood on bitcoin has a financial incentive to paint a picture of increasing 'transactions,' and when painting that picture is as simple as flipping a switch on a server, it's pretty obvious that is what is occurring.

Udik 11y ago

"the ultimate aim is to turn bitcoin into something that anyone can use to more easily store, send, and receive money" Please, tell how you do that with a currency whose value fluctuates so wildly. The problem with bitcoin, to put it simply, is that as soon as people start using it, its value soars, making it unusable again. That's why it will never work in its current form.

balladeer 11y ago
This is what I have never understood about Bitcoin and its advocates (who I guess are just fanboys or early adopters holding bitcoins). I mean it's just like shares. Also, it's very skewed. Whoever got in first has got a lot of it with your chance of getting it at later stages not equal, actually extremely unlikely. And no sir, no, it's not the same case with "money" as we use it today. Bitcoin is broken in this sense if we talk of it from a traditional mean of currency point of view. It's just a glorified fad for geeks, fans, and early adopters.
- cb18 11y ago
  Bitcoin and its advocates (who I guess are just [...] early adopters holding bitcoins). Exactly. This is the fatal flaw of bitcoin, the distribution model.
  - winthrowe 11y ago
    What's your alternative distribution model? How do you propose to bootstrap an independent value store unattached to existing national currencies? It seems that bitcoin mirrors that quote about democracy in that way, "the worst form except the others that have been tried."