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Bitcoin Beat the Trough of Sorrow
- stephensonsco 10y agoI'm pretty pumped about this. Things are looking really good but still not obviously in the clear. Cautiously optimistic :)
- aurelius12 10y agoYou could have made the exact same case with the exact same chart in June/July 2014, after which the Bitcoin price crashed.
- TylerE 10y agoBut don't you understand? <Insert literally anything at all> is good for bitcoin!
- stephensonsco 10y agoExactly!
- yongjik 10y ago> <Insert literally anything at all> is good for bitcoin! > anything at all is good for bitcoin! ...instruction unclear, did I do it right?
- TylerE 10y agoPretty much! Price goes up! Good for bitcoin! Price is up! Price goes down? Good for bitcoin! Cheap coins! Bitcoin used for ransomeware? Good for bitcoin! We're on CNN!
- ISL 10y agoBitcoin (and most other things in finance) is best understood on a log plot. https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?scale=1×pan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?scale=1×pan...
- overgard 10y agoIn the same way correlation does not equate to causation, similar graphs doesnt mean similar narratives.
- zekevermillion 10y agoThat is true. As a heuristic, I think the hype cycle is useful just to stand for the idea that "important work gets done often times when the market has given up". It is not useful to say "[insert your asset here] has recovered from a slump, so it is all good now".
- zekevermillion 10y agoAnalogies are dangerous, but I don't think we have seen either the "peak of inflated expectations" or the "trough of sorry" yet when it comes to bitcoin.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoCan someone help me understand how a network that can only do 3.2[1] transactions-per-second stand up as anything other than a speculative commodity? How can BTC possibly survive at such slow (and increasingly expensive) transaction speeds? 1. http://hashingit.com/analysis/33-7-transactions-per-second http://hashingit.com/analysis/33-7-transactions-per-second
- willempienaar 10y agoIt might not be viable as a means of facilitating transactions, but it can possibly survive as a store of value.
- Analemma_ 10y agoI don't understand this comment at all. What use do bitcoins have if they cannot process any transactions? They have no inherent value.
- natrius 10y agoCurrency is a collective delusion. It's valuable if everyone believes it is, which is why precious metals trade higher than their usefulness in industry. I don't think Bitcoin's delusion will last more than another decade. We'll probably find a way to design a delusion that distributes value "fairly" rather than to a class of nerd overlords. But until then, it's a fun story to watch.
- joosters 10y agoBut countries' currencies have a real value in that they are the only way to pay taxes. If the only way to obtain water was through my exclusive 'magic beans' tokens, then they would have real value too. Bitcoin ownership gives you nothing, except perhaps an increased risk of hacking losses...
- wyager 10y agoThere's no such thing as "inherent value". Value is an emergent property of the utility functions of the billions of humans involved in the market. Can you explain why gold is as valuable as it is? And no, the answer is not "you can use it in jewelery and circuits".
- cocktailpeanuts 10y agoI have some tens of thousands of dollars in bitcoin, and I keep track of all the Bitcoin/Blockchain news because I do think the technology has potential. However my impression after following all these "bitcoin influencer" people on Twitter is: all they talk about is how Bitcoin will take over the world, again and again, and again, and again. They don't even try to come up with a new spin. It's always the same message, they basically write blog posts and articles about how Bitcoin is a game changer, yada yada. I expected to gain some insights following these people, as in they would actually come up with some fresh ideas, etc. But no, all they do is just the rehash of the same stuff. It reached the point where I feel like I'm going through the movie "groundhog day", so I unfollowed all these people and only follow a couple of bitcoin related blogs. Seriously, the circle jerking in the bitcoin community is too excessive.
- jamiepenney 10y agoThat's because it's a pump and dump scheme. They're just trying to rustle up some new bag holders.
- imaginenore 10y agoIt's not. I use bitcoin to pay for a few online services, including my hosting. I love it. It would be absolutely awesome if bitcoin succeeded, even if the price remained the same (I know it's mathematically impossible, but still). A currency that no single government/entity can stop or freeze. A currency that no government can dilute. It's kind of like digital gold, except the amount of gold in the universe is practically unlimited.
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoBitcoin's value comes from it's acceptance and worldwide capability. There's nothing that can allow you to move money to every country on the planet with such small fees. However, you are correct. In order for Bitcoin's price to increase, people must value it and more people must use it.
- dublinben 10y agoAnyone who is involved in the "bitcoin community" has a vested interest in seeing the price increase. You're never going to get critical or even neutral information from someone with such an obvious conflict of interest.
- panic 10y agoA quick citation for the cutting-edge methodology used in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIlNIVXpIns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIlNIVXpIns
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 10y ago"This graph looks like this other made-up graph." Congratulations.
- smaddox 10y agoIndeed. It would be one thing if he had similar plots of non-crypto-currency market cap. over time, but as far as I can tell this graph is completely unique to bitcoin.
- Mahn 10y agoThere's this SMBC comic [1] that brought up the fact that no matter your position or opinion on a subject, you can always find something to support it on the internet. When people compare growth graphs to made up cycle/hype graphs I feel it's a little bit like this; the comparison ends up uncanny because you, perhaps subconsciously, looked for graph that matched a certain narrative in the first place. There are many ways to interpret what data says, so it's easy to fall into this trap, all you need is a certain preconceived idea and suddenly all you are looking for is confirmation, which you'll always find if you look hard enough. [1] http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/citation-needed http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/citation-needed
- tadeegan 10y agoThis feels like the hacker news I remember. :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pizza 10y agoA taster of the kool aid ye may be, but a part of me says try not to make yourself be known as a whale/mark ;)
- user837387 10y agoI'll bite, what do you mean?
- joshontheweb 10y agoWhales (large btc owners) can become targets for hackers or even home invasions if the wrong people get wind of who you are.
- imaginenore 10y agoI think he means you have to be careful with that kind of bitcoin wealth, especially if you store your bitcoins yourself. All it takes is one criminal to find this out, and there will be all kinds of people trying to get it. It's pretty trivial to break into someone's apartment and torture you till you give up your bitcoins.
- acdha 10y agoTorture? It's possible but I'd lay long odds that in most cases a targeted phishing or malware attack would be both easier and cheaper — and far less likely to get a serious law-enforcement response. Someone being held captive for money would make the national news and the perpetrators would have a tough time heading for the nearest country without an extradition treaty; “rich guy shouldn't have clicked on that link” might not even make the local news.
- zwily 10y agoGiven his background with bitcoin, I'm guessing (hoping) he keeps his coins in a way malware can't get at them.
- atlih 10y agoThe bitcoin price up or down doesn't correlate with "bitcoin taking over the world". It could crash down to 0.5$ and still takeover more of the worlds transactions. What matters is this graph https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all
- Ologn 10y agoBitcoins have no value. Nothing is more an indication of quantitative easing and bubbles and so forth than Bitcoin. A $12 billion market cap, as worthless as the $12 billion valuation of some unicorns. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger have both been around 85 years and know when something has value and when it doesn't. "Rat poison" is what Munger calls Bitcoin and Buffett also notes their worthlessness. Why does a Bitcoin have value? There is no answer to this question. They're as worthless as Ponzi's postal reply coupons. One day, like Flooz and Beenz and other worthless "electronic currencies" before it, Bitcoin will come crashing down into worthlessness. It's surrounded by scammers - Mt. Gox, Butterfly Labs was raided, on and on. That should tell you something.
- AtheistOfFail 10y agoA Bitcoin has no inherent value. The only value attributed to Bitcoin is that someone, somewhere had to spend electricity to create a Bitcoin. Sort of like when you eat in the morning, go to work and get a paycheck, your work has value. Now, is the Bitcoin price crazy? Maybe a little bit, but it's reacted very strongly to the Donald Trump election since it's considered to be alternative to existing remittances that cannot be taxed (IE, remittances to Mexico). Now in regards to your scammers, Mt Gox was the only exchange and you know 'power corrupts... I forget the saying' Butterfly Labs got raided because they took a lot of money from the community for mining gear and delivered nothing.
- s_m_t 10y agoThe scammers do tell me something. In my view Bitcoin has some real utility and 'value' precisely for the same reason that it attracts so many scammers. As long as people want some form of digital, hard to track, irreversible way to exchange things that can't be duplicated then Bitcoin will have some value. Drugs, guns, donations to political organizations, scamming, etc etc. Those are big forces with a fair amount of market value; If Bitcoin is the best way to trade in them then of course it will have value.
- tomsthumb 10y ago> Bitcoins have no value It's money (a currency). Money has value because someone says it has value and someone else agrees. Congrats, bitcoin has value! The nature of that value may be volatile and doomed to drop severely or go away entirely in the future, but that doesn't make it non-existent now.